The review into the Nigel Farage debacle and the wider issue of ‘debanking’ at Coutts, the posh bit of NatWest, is landing anytime now with the bank’s board.

This piece of work, commissioned by NatWest at the end of July from law firm Travers Smith, is not likely to placate Mr Farage or anyone else.

Nothing is likely to be published before the end of October. The board, led by chairman Sir Howard Davies, who has himself emerged tarnished from the affair, will take several weeks to digest the findings.

The intention is merely to release the key findings, along with recommendations and disciplinary actions the bank plans to take – and is obliged by regulations to reveal.

It will disclose any pay and bonus clawbacks for Dame Alison Rose, who is being paid a package of £2.4m under her contract, alongside the Travers Smith report, as it must do so under stock market rules.

A sign of the times: The review into the Nigel Farage debacle and the wider issue of ‘debanking’ was commissioned by NatWest at the end of July

However, there is no such requirement to reveal if Peter Flavel, the former CEO of Coutts, thought to have earned between £1.5m and £2m a year, is also being hit by retribution in the pocket.

We won’t know anything until the Coutts annual report next year and that document is unlikely to give a full picture.

Leaving aside Farage’s dismissal of the Travers Smith review as a whitewash by an establishment law firm, it is undeniably limited in its scope. The review is not, for instance, examining the chaotic nature of Rose’s resignation, where Davies at first supported her and then backtracked after a late-night intervention by the Treasury.

Nor is it looking at how Davies, who steps down in the spring, handled the affair.

It is part of a long and depressing history of supposedly independent investigations into the failings of our banks. Almost without exception, these turn out to be a huge expenditure of time and money that result in no one being held to account.

Possibly the most egregious example is the probe into the managers at HBOS who were in charge when it went to the brink.

An inquiry that had cost City regulators £7.2m wound up last summer, 14 years after the event. It resulted in no action.

Similarly, an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority into the scandal at NatWest’s former unit GRG, which was supposed to nurture troubled small and medium businesses back to health, decided in 2019 not to punish the bank. This was despite evidence of widespread mistreatment of customers after the 2008 crisis. The identities of managers accused of being responsible were kept under wraps.

Investigations can be hamstrung by ‘Maxwellisation’, which is named after the late tycoon Robert Maxwell, and gives people the right to respond to criticisms.

In the case of investigations into HBOS this resulted in 1425 representations from 35 people, which were followed by re-Maxwellising.

A new variant appears to be a reluctance to publish adverse findings against named individuals due to claims this may breach privacy or data protection laws.

Be that as it may, it can look as though the system is geared to the interests of bosses protecting themselves, as well as shielding firms and regulators from lawsuits.

That mentality was in evidence when the Bank of England argued individuals should not be named in a report into the £236m collapse of London Capital and Finance, which criticised governor Andrew Bailey.

The taxpaying public, which has supported NatWest for so long in the face of so many disasters, deserves better.

Labour used the anniversary of Liz Truss’s explosive mini-Budget to gold-plate the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Unlike austerity, the creation of the independent OBR is one George Osborne initiative which Rachel Reeves can support.

The shadow chancellor promises to put into law that ‘permanent tax and spending changes’ will be subject to OBR scrutiny.

Planning: Rachel Reeves promises to put into law that ‘permanent tax and spending changes’ will be subject to OBR scrutiny

What Reeves didn’t mention was that the OBR did offer to do a speedy assessment of the Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng tax and spending commitments but the proposal was rejected. 

The Tory Right believe that the OBR is the Treasury in disguise. Truss and Kwarteng didn’t want it marking their homework.

The refusal to give the OBR a look in was among the reasons that the yields on gilt-edged stock exploded, triggering the crisis which forced the sacking of then chancellor Kwarteng and the swift resignation of the PM. 

Neither of them (nor, one would suggest, the OBR) could have anticipated that the pension funds had become casinos by turning UK bonds, one of the safest assets on the planet, into derivatives known as liability driven investments (LDIs).

Reeves says that Labour will commit to a single budget by the end of November each year, giving families and business time to plan before the start of the fiscal year in April. The notion that this is some radical new deal needs to be scotched.

It was her Labour predecessor Gordon Brown who invented the concept of the pre-budget report in November for precisely that reason. 

When Brown announced a huge out-of-sequence expansion of spending on the NHS (later to be paid for by a 1 per cent surcharge on national insurance) it largely was about spiking Sir Tony Blair’s guns.

The word ‘permanent’ is critical to Reeves’s statement. It would allow a Labour chancellor to follow in the footsteps of Rishi Sunak with the furlough scheme in Covid and Truss with her energy subsidy after Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

A Labour chancellor will still be able to make policy on the hoof without consulting the OBR.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Sentry duty

Microsoft boss Brad Smith finally looks to have overcome the rightful opposition of Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority to the tech giant’s £60bn takeover of Call of Duty gaming outfit Activision Blizzard.

The breakthrough came when Activision pledged to sell its cloud streaming rights to French gaming rival Ubisoft. Victory for Microsoft may now be in sight but Smith has won few friends through his public attack on the CMA and Britain.

His over-the-top criticisms of the UK process has been an own goal, costing Microsoft millions of pounds in legal fees. By objecting to the original deal, the CMA and its chief executive Sarah Cardell raised universal concerns about the wish of Big Tech to the rule the world.

Previous Silicon Valley takeovers have often been a substitute for new ideas and an attempt to dominate markets.

There are still questions to be asked about the Ubisoft arrangements and whether it is wise for so much power over the gaming world to be in so few hands. 

Fear that open architecture would be destroyed prevented Nvidia from buying Arm Holdings. The EU is coming down hard on Google over its alleged abuse of ad technology to dominate the commercials space.

The Microsoft deal threatens to smother an infant creative business, weakening the ability of game innovators to reach markets.

Microsoft has won a narrow victory. In the process Smith and the company have done considerable reputational damage.

Opening bell

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF likes nothing better than a punch-up – as we saw when its LIV golf franchise waved the dollar bills and took effective control of the US PGA tour.

It now has its sights on wrestling and the mixed martial arts champion Ultimate Fighting League. The chosen weapon is the smaller Professional Fighters League (PFL) into which it has sunk $100m. 

As with golf – brought up by Phil Mickelson – a Saudi controlled PFL could change the economics by tempting big-name fighters with contracts beyond the dreams of avarice.

The attraction of mixed martial arts is the relatively small number of under 1,000 competitors which makes domination possible.

Let combat begin.

The departure of Rupert Murdoch from his two core media groups Fox in the US and News Corp is a signal moment.

There is to be no succession struggle for the time being, with eldest son Lachlan taking the helm.

But with three other siblings having voting stock in a Nevada-based family trust, an eventual challenge cannot be ruled out.

The scale of the empire is much diminished. Murdoch completed one of the deals of this century when he sold most of US entertainment empire to Disney in what was billed as a $71.3billion (£57.5billion) deal in 2019. 

It was a top-of-the-market transaction and Disney has struggled ever since to make it work amid a subsiding share price and the return of chief executive Bob Iger.

Stepping down: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is retiring after 70 years – with second son Lachlan to take over the family dynasty

The other coup was the sale of Britain’s Sky to American cable giant Comcast for $39billion (£31.5billion) a year earlier.

Murdoch’s willingness to take brave, far reaching decisions in a fast changing world of media and communications largely went unsung. Instead, he is often cast in the media as an evil genius with too much political power.

The rump of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will need some reshaping. The Fox Corp’s alliance with Donald Trump has cost it dearly. 

Earlier this year, it forked out $800million (£645million) in a legal battle with election equipment supplier Dominion over the network’s alleged spread of voting conspiracy theories. 

Fox news channels remain immensely popular, when rivals such as CNN are languishing.

However, so called ‘cord cutting’ is challenging the cable subscription model. The popularity of streaming services and the challenge of how to make a profitable transition is very real.

The change of leadership will also put News Corp – owner of the Sun, Times and Wall Street Journal – in the frame for change. 

The titles are all engaged in what is proving a fertile conversion from paper to digital. But the shadow of the phone hacking past of the Sun still hangs over that title. 

Newspapers are deeply embedded in the Murdoch DNA. But the transition to the next generation won’t be entirely smooth.

Generation game

A larger and more resilient economy is delivering the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt higher receipts than projected at the time of the March budget, and enabling him to build a mini war-chest. 

Main drivers are PAYE receipts and VAT both of which tell us the economy is not down and out.

Inheritance taxes (IHT), a bugbear for potential Tory voters, also are delivering for the Exchequer at £3.2billion in the April-August period, some £300million up on the comparable period of 2023. 

IHT is often not very high on the agenda of most ordinary citizens unless they are staring their maker in the eye.

It is also one of those taxes which may not be on the radar of younger Britons as they wrestle with student loans, climbing the housing ladder and all the struggles which are seen as stirring inter-generational conflict. 

This is a nonsense. The immediate offspring of the baby boomers and their grandchildren should pay close attention.

Many worry about what has become known in the US as SKI-ing, Spending the Kids Inheritance, but they might be wiser to focus on IHT. 

The accidental wealth accumulated in the residential housing market, together with some handsome pension pots, has driven a whole new cohort into inheritance tax brackets.

Indeed, in spite of all the moans about inter-generational unfairness, many offspring and grandchildren are already benefiting from accidental wealth through the established route of the bank of Mum and Dad or ‘educational’ assistance out of income.

Nevertheless, as the grim reaper arrives for the boomers, the prospect of HMRC grabbing the family nest-egg ought to be as of much concern to younger voters as the silver surfers. That is why an end to IHT or bigger reliefs could be such a vote winner.

Simon says

Profit upgrades at Next are a feature of Simon Wolfson’s cautious style of management. So the latest raised profits guidance, from £845million to £875million is not a surprise.

It also shows that in spite of the Wilko debacle, Britons are still defying the cost of living crisis and scanning their debit and credit cards.

As interesting is Wolfson’s clear-headed take on supply chains. His analysis shows that the impact of the great inflation is fading fast. Other FTSE firms, which prioritise PR guff, could learn.

Britain’s biggest economic challenge is to boost productivity and raise the incomes of the nation’s workforce. Tax incentives are part of the solution, but investment in infrastructure is key.

All the drivers in our political system focus on short-term dividends.

It is not surprising, as the autumn statement approaches, that the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is looking at ways of releasing resources to prepare for tax reforms.

The three Hs – Hinkley, HS2 and a third runway at Heathrow – all need to be delivered to boost global Britain. Only the super-nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset has any certainty.

Making an effort: The long-term waste of giving up on big infrastructure is enormous

Enemies of HS2, a combination of Nimby home county residents, green activists and advocates of fixing suburban railways and roads, will be cock-a-hoop should Rishi Sunak and Hunt bring down the guillotine on the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg.

The escalation of the costs (more than twice the early estimate of £33billion) has already led to the eastern leg to Leeds being sacrificed and a grand terminal at Euston delayed.

The long-term waste of giving up on big infrastructure is enormous. It required a mammoth effort by the last Labour government to preserve the fast rail link to the Chunnel and the brilliant refurbishment of St Pancras, in which the country can take pride.

Similarly, it took enormous courage to persevere with the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) but the difference it has made to travel in the South East is immeasurable. The economic value added at new and rebuilt stations has spread prosperity.

Much is made of how, in an age of AI and social media, the time shaved off HS2’s journey to Birmingham and Manchester will not be significant. 

In Japan and France, the pioneering of high-speed rail travel led to fabulous economic development along routes. It is no surprise that Birmingham is sucking in more new business investment than any other conurbation in Britain, adding 36 per cent to the area’s GDP over the last decade or £29billion. 

Airport woes: Heathrow is operating with less runways than its major Continental rivals

That is partly the HS2 halo effect. Manchester and way stations along the route could expect the same.

The third H, Heathrow’s new runway, was knocked off schedules by Covid-19. Heathrow is now back at pre-Covid passenger traffic. But it is operating with less runways than its major Continental rivals.

All the preparatory work for a third runway has been done and the case for extra capacity is stronger than ever. The carbon zero lobby needs to recognise that air traffic is not going away. What needs to change is the sustainability of aircraft and incentives to use new greener fuel sources.

One would expect Heathrow to hold back on its ambition until after the general election. An extra runway is essential if the vision of Britain’s tilt to Indo-Pacific is to be fulfilled. HS2, if built, will lift the UK’s neglected regions.

Armed robbery

The gleeful, contrived pictures from Nasdaq, celebrating the pop in Arm Holdings’ return to the public markets, are one of the reasons why New York does initial public offerings better than London. The US is the home of razzmatazz, so even if the gloss comes off the Arm stock, it will be gold for investment bankers as they unleash next-generation tech floats.

Here in the UK, we can only look on with deep regret that our flagship Cambridge-based tech pioneer deserted these shores.

Arm’s chief executive Rene Haas and senior colleagues have parked themselves in the US. And while the intellectual property and science remains in the UK, one has to wonder for how long.

We should not forget who is to blame for the fiasco of Arm’s loss to the UK. Theresa May and her Chancellor Philip Hammond treated SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son as a conquering hero in 2016, welcomed him to Downing Street, and did nothing to protect Arm’s integrity. Only one foundation shareholder, Baillie Gifford, opposed the transaction. So galling and shameful.

X-factor

When Carolyn McCall announced that ITV would be spending £160million developing ITVX, its own streaming services, the shares sank.

The truth is that ITVX is a lifeline for the terrestrial broadcaster at a time when linear advertising is under stress. In the first six months of 2023, active users jumped 29 per cent to 12.5m and ‘dwell time’ is surging.

UK long investors must start to look beyond the next dividend cheque.

The names of UK life sciences pioneers Abcam, Instem and Dechra Pharmaceuticals may not be very familiar.

Yet each of the three listed companies – antibody supplier Abcam, pharma software innovator Instem and veterinary drugs maker Dechra – have been, or are being, swallowed by bigger overseas competitors.

They are precisely the kind of firms, which given a more vibrant and liquid London stock market, potentially could have developed into the next GlaxoSmithKline or Smith & Nephew.

Instead of inventive British firms expanding organically or through bold acquisitions, they have become sitting ducks, easily absorbed by more wealthy foreign predators.

Some of the blame for this rests with flaccid boards of directors who raise the white flag and head off into the sunset, clutching fat cheques for automatically vested share options. The fundamental reasons for the decline in the cult of UK equity run much deeper than that.

Time for reflection?: Britain has an investment community hung up on avoiding risk and in thrall to corporate governance and short-term returns

Share registers have changed dramatically with pension funds and long-term investors barely visible. The spirit of adventure and ambition, which enabled AstraZeneca, Unilever and Diageo to become global leaders in their respective fields, sadly looks to be lost. Instead, Britain has an investment community hung up on avoiding risk and in thrall to corporate governance and short-term returns.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt sought to try and reverse declinist tendencies with the Edinburgh reforms at the end of last year.

Eight months on and little of the £75billion of pension fund cash, which he pledged to unleash for riskier innovative investment, has been unlocked.

Similarly, modernisation of stock market listings, proposed by the London Stock Exchange and broadly supported by City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority, has become mired in controversy because of objections from governance mavens. At the turn of the millennium, some 39 per cent of the UK stock market was owned by UK pension funds. That number that has now shockingly fallen to just 4 per cent.

Blame for this market malfunction can be placed at several doors. Veteran City fund manager Richard Buxton, winding up a long career at Schroders and Jupiter, blames over cautious rules imposed by regulators and auditors who have attempted to make pension fund investment risk free.

Certainly the rule makers made it inevitable that pension funds would become squeamish about risks. The origins of the great pensions switch, from equities to shares, date back to the 1990s. The late Robert Maxwell’s raid on the Mirror Group pension fund led to tougher protections for pensioners but put the brakes on risk-taking.

A key incentive for pension funds investment in equities was eliminated by Gordon Brown in 1997 when he effectively abolished the tax breaks on dividends paid into retirement nest eggs. Together, regulatory and tax changes effectively killed Britain’s ‘gold standard’ defined benefit pensions culture.

Big firms such as Boots, with in surplus schemes, made it fashionable to lock in the gains by switching into bonds. The idea that bonds are a safer place was blown out of the water by the liability-driven investment (LDIs) implosion last year. Pension fund advisers turned risk-free assets into derivatives and threatened outcomes for at least 5m present and future retirees.

Regulators and actuaries who supported the bond revolution need to take responsibility for a potential catastrophe. The switch from equity to bonds had diminished London’s status as a share trading and listing powerhouse. Professional markets for currencies, derivatives and the like, still lead the world. But the consequences of great pension fund retreat for UK plc have been dire.

Cadbury might still be British had retirement money not been displaced by hedge funds. Investment in our public utilities would have been a priority rather than dividends distributed to far flung investors.

And Arm Holdings, Britain’s most valued semi-conductor creator, might never have escaped to New York. Hunt fired the starting gun seeking change. It is time pension funds respond to the challenge.

The Barclays Equity Gilt Study – with data reaching back to 1899 – shows over time shares always outperform gilts and indeed continued to do so through Covid-19 and the Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Aversion to risk has been at a heavy cost to the country.

Whether the Lionesses win or lose against Spain tomorrow – and of course they will win – women’s football in England, and the rest of the UK, is going through the most spectacular transformation, defying even the most hardened sceptics.

Seven million fans in the UK watched the semi-final against Australia.

Double that are expected to tune in to the final at Stadium Australia in Sydney, the first time an England football team has played in a World Cup final since 1966 when Germany were beaten.

That’s a long time to wait for a rerun, but you can rely on the England fans to be prepared – and in style. Waitrose is stocking up on extra bacon, eggs, sausage and, indeed, English fizz ready for the celebration. Website searches for brunch food are up 54 per cent.

It is a much needed boost to an otherwise dismal summer for retail sales. VoucherCodes.co.uk reckons there will be a boost to the economy of £185m. About 11m are expected to stay home to watch the final with another 3m going to a pub or bar, which will help lift the hospitality sector. As it is a little early for drinking – the kick-off is at 11am – most spending will be on teas and coffees, although a few goals from Lauren Hemp will soon put paid to that puritanism.

Spectacular transformation: Seven million fans in the UK watched the semi-final against Australia

Yet this is small fry compared to the potential size of the UK women’s football market. If the sport keeps growing at its current rate, experts predict the market will easily be worth £1billion over the next decade through a mixture of commercial deals, sponsorship and broadcasting. Compare that to the total value of all women’s sports for 2021 of $1billion, and you can see how big the UK’s home market could be.

The more sceptical observers like to say that the only reason there has been such a hullabaloo about the women’s game is because the Lionesses are on such a winning streak, having won the Euros against Germany last year. Once the excitement dies down, the game will retreat.

Yet that is not the case at all. Quite the reverse. Deloitte’s annual review of football shows that between 2021 and 2022, revenue for broadcast – what’s called bundled packages when sponsors pay for their brands to appear on the shirts of both a club’s men and women team – and other commercial deals grew by 60 per cent.

Barclays has tripled what it pays for sponsoring the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championships. It is now forking out £30m for three years whereas before it paid £10m for three years.

Baby clothing company, Joie, recently signed a partnership with Manchester City’s women’s team and so on. Broadcast income is also accelerating with the WSL and WC recently signing an annual £8m deal with Sky and the BBC, the highest of any professional football league in the world.

Players are also earning more. Combined wages across the 12 WSL clubs was £25m, up 37 per cent on the previous season. More critically, attendance at WSL and WC matches has soared by 200 per cent.

What is also surprising is that attendances are split pretty equally between women and men, despite the widespread attitude that the female game is nowhere near as exciting as the men’s.

I thought that too until my son dragged me to a Chelsea v Tottenham women’s game recently, and how wrong I was. What was heartening to see too was the sheer number of families going together. Ticket prices at £10 a shot are being kept low to attract more fans, and a good thing too.

But despite this big jump in attendances, the average number of fans attending games is still only 5,600 per match, compared to up to 50,000 for men’s matches.

Deloitte’s Amy Clarke, who specialises in women’s football, reckons that as the game becomes more professional, attendances will grow rapidly.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation as one of the drawbacks facing women’s teams is the lack of infrastructure, and there is a need for more investment in the clubs.

Yet that’s changing too, and fast. With perfect timing, tech entrepreneur Victoire Cogevina Reynal launched a $100m fund this week aimed at buying controlling stakes in women’s football clubs in Europe and Latin America. Named Mercury 13 after female pilots who were not allowed to join Nasa’s astronaut programme because of their sex, Reynal is said to be most interested in looking at English clubs first.

She clearly has a good eye for a winner.

The weather has been wet, interest rates have gone up again and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says the UK is caught in a low growth trap.

It’s easy to wallow in defeatism and gloom. But as readers of these City pages may have discerned, there is a much more positive story to tell.

Some of the UK’s biggest firms are in rude health, despite the dismal backdrop, as the recent crop of half year results has shown. Shares in Rolls-Royce are up nearly 140 per cent in the past 12 months thanks to signs of a revival under new boss Tufan Erginbilgic.

He is adamant that the bounceback is not merely a Covid recovery but is due to ‘self-help’ at a company that has not always been well-managed. The UK’s largest defence company BAE, a beneficiary of the war in Ukraine, is also in fine fettle.

This is excellent news for believers in ‘levelling up’, as the firm is a major employer and provider of apprenticeships in less-well off areas such as Barrow-in-Furness. Then we have the rise of Greggs, whose pies and sausage rolls have captivated the nation. It seems unstoppable. From its Geordie heartland, it has colonised the South and plans to have 3,000 stores by the end of 2027. Not bad going for a firm which I remember as a youngster in the North East for selling cheap, wonky bread loaves to grannies.

Flying the flag: Some of the UK’s biggest firms are in rude health, despite the dismal backdrop

No roll call of corporate excellence would be complete without a mention of Next. Under Lord Wolfson it is one of the best-managed businesses in the land. Its sales for May to July were better than predicted. A satisfying moment of summer 2023 has been seeing pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca turn the tables on Pfizer, the US rival which tried to take it over in 2014.

AZ, now the UK’s most valuable company, is steaming ahead with strong sales of cancer and diabetes drugs. Chief executive Pascal Soriot thumbed his nose at Pfizer with a $1billion deal to buy its gene therapy assets.

There are common threads. One is simplicity. Greggs is an exemplar of doing things that are deceptively simple, really well. The observation that people want snacks later in the day has helped improve sales, as the group extended opening times at some stores.

Like most of the best ideas, it is obvious once someone has thought of it. Second is clarity. Wolfson at Next is known for his clear communication, which stands out in a swamp of verbosity. Firms that have a clear strategy, plainly expressed, are more likely to succeed than ones drowning in gobbledegook.

Third, companies must be well run, and get the basics right, which is why Next performs. The prevalence of bad management elsewhere is shocking.

The UK is privileged to have a solid base of large firms with long histories. Rolls-Royce goes back to the Victorian era, as does the heritage of BAE, through firms it has absorbed such as the old Vickers shipbuilders.

Greggs was founded on Tyneside more than eighty years ago. The old ICI – in its pomp Britain’s bellwether business with its fingers in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, fertilisers and paint – lives on at Astra.

Some people on Teesside, where it was a major employer, still called the AZ Covid vaccine ‘the ICI jab’. Sustainability is now taken to mean green, but these companies are sustainable in the sense of longevity.

Yes, we should pour energy into exciting new firms but value the golden oldies too.

It need not be mutually exclusive. The late great Ivan Menezes was boss for a decade of drinks giant Diageo, where some brands date back to the 18th Century. Nevertheless, he described the multi-national as a ‘start-up’ because there are always so many new opportunities to conquer. That’s the spirit.

The performance of companies as diverse as Apple, Britain’s world-leading advertising group WPP and broadcaster ITV might not appear to have anything in common.

Nevertheless, disappointing financial results from all of these businesses have a common cause.

Economists monitor all kinds of data in seeking to project where national and global output is going.

Freight rates, credit and debit card activity, and cranes across urban landscapes (a favourite of the late chancellor Nigel Lawson) are all followed by analysts as a means of getting a jump on the competition. These are especially powerful tools for investment banks, hedge funds and other traders.

Among the unsung indicators are the promotional budgets of the corporate world.

Bad omen: When there are worries in the executive suite about the future, promotional and advertising budgets are the first to be cut

So far, in spite of the Bank of England’s gloomy forecasts, knocking consumption and business investment on the head has proved harder than the interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee might care to admit.

Latest data shows booming car registrations with a 25 per cent uplift in July 2023 from a year ago and the 12th consecutive rise. That almost parallels the Bank of England’s 14-month tightening cycle. Admittedly, there may be special factors such as the 2030 target for going electric. Nevertheless, the data is far from meaningless.

The headlines tell us that higher interest rates are causing pain and will monster housing and construction.

Yet the Bank’s own mortgage approval data and home loans figures ticked up in June. The construction Purchasing Managers’ Index also jumped in the same month and is now out of recession territory.

An underrated indicator is advertising. As someone who started his career at J Walter Thompson, now embedded in WPP, and has gone on to spend several decades on national newspapers, I could not but be aware of how advertising provides clues to corporate jitters. Most marketing directors would testify that when there are worries in the executive suite about the future, promotional and advertising budgets are the first to be cut. Technology has made that crude assessment more complicated now that media buying is likely to be handled by an algorithm and made ever more volatile by AI.

Yet the stories from WPP, Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital and ITV are more or less the same. In July, S4 Capital, which does digital advertising, warned that second-quarter income was hammering the commercial spend of clients such as Facebook and Google and, one dare say, Apple.

WPP tells the same story. Shares plummeted 3.5 per cent in trading yesterday as the company downgraded its prospects because of lower spending by tech customers. Clients are much more cautious about promotional spend.

Fearful of declines in traditional (now called linear) advertising, ITV, which in the UK still has the luxury of being able to reach mass audiences, also recently reported disappointing commercial data.

In the light of what may prove to be a secular decline, it has been active in seeking new sources of income, from streaming subscriptions to studio production. So what should we make of all of this? It is not entirely encouraging, in spite of recent bumper results from a range of FTSE 100 companies, which have used the post-Covid era to widen profit margins. It would suggest that the very biggest global companies have been dealt a psychological, if not much of a financial, blow from the aggressive round of interest rate increases on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield.

There is a real possibility than advertisers have pushed the pause button too soon and a global recession is averted.

In the US, there is much talk of a ‘soft landing’ – a slowdown which does not cause recession. Given the amount of fiscal stimulus undertaken by the Biden Administration, that would not be that surprising.

After the Bank of England’s fire and brimstone talk about wage pressure and the need to come down hard on inflation at Thursday’s interest rate meeting, there are first hints that it may soon be possible to ease off the brakes in the UK.

Chief economist Huw Pill said policy actions so far ‘are working in pursuit of target’. Advertisers may have cut and run too soon. If the US, Britain and others can get through this year without a recession, the marketing departments might be allowed to turn the spending taps back on and secure new sales.