MoneyWeek 1096

“The Bank of England expects inflation to hit 8%, so double figures are almost a given” If the chancellor wasn’t worried about his spring statement on Tuesday night, I think we can be pretty sure that he was very worried indeed by 7.01am on Wednesday morning. At 7am, the Office for National Statistics released the UK’s latest inflation numbers. Thanks mostly to rising energy and fuel prices, UK inflation (as measured by the consumer price index) hit 6.2%, a 30-year high. The retail price index (RPI), the old measure, is rising at 8.2%. A reminder: the Bank of England inflation target (hitting it is its main job) is 2%. The worst, as Rishi Sunak knows, is yet to come. There is a view in the UK that there are elements of Brexit…

A group of 77 ex-employees of Buzzfeed are suing the news outlet for $8.7m, claiming its failures of communication cost them the chance to sell their shares at the best price, says The New York Times. In June, Buzzfeed decided to go public by merging with special purpose acquisition company (Spac) 890 Fifth Avenue Partners. But by December, most of the original investors in the Spac had pulled out. Buzzfeed went public that month anyway, only to see its share price fall by more than 60%. In all, the staff held over 900,000 shares. They claim that the decision to list despite the exodus of investors was irresponsible, and that a failure to explain the sales process left many staff unable to sell promptly.…

The total prize money for the Women’s FA Cup will increase to £3m next season, a tenfold rise on the current £428,915 fund, says The Guardian. The UK Football Association said that women’s football was in a growth phase, and that the larger sum will help smaller teams to cover the costs of taking part. Pensioners may be in line to receive a £733 increase in their state pension from 2023, reports The Daily Telegraph. The government confirmed that it will return to using the “triple lock”, whereby the state pension is raised by the highest of wage growth, inflation or 2.5%. That would imply a 7.6% rise, if investment bank Goldman Sachs’ forecasts for UK inflation in September are correct. Cover illustration: Howard McWilliam. Photos: Alamy; Neil Aldridge©Getty Images…

Porn star Stormy Daniels (pictured) has lost an appeal to avoid paying nearly $300,000 of legal fees in a years-long case against former US president Donald Trump, says CNBC. Daniels had sued Trump with the aim of being released from a non-disclosure agreement regarding their alleged affair over a decade ago. Her appeal was denied due to her failure to file court paperwork in time. Konrad Bicher, who calls himself “the wolf of Airbnb”, is being sued for $1.5m by New York landlords 42nd and 10th Associates LLC for allegedly hosting an illegal short-term rental service on their property, says The New York Post. Bicher reportedly rented out the luxury flats for up to $97 an hour on letting websites such as Airbnb for photo shoots and music videos, then vacated…

“The expectation going into this year was that we would see inflation peaking in the first quarter and maybe levelling out” before cooling in the second half of the year, US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said this week. “That story has already fallen apart.” With annual inflation running at 7.9% in the US and 6.2% in the UK and global commodity prices surging because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, central banks around the world are being forced into inflation-fighting mode. Last week the Fed raised interest rates for the first time in four years, while the Bank of England delivered a further 0.25 percentage point hike to 0.75%. This week Powell suggested that the Fed could even serve up a half-point increase (rather than the usual quarter-point increment) at a…

The price of oil “whipsawed from a peak of $128 to as low as $98” in a fortnight as the market gyrated between Western sanctions on Russia, China’s Covid-19 surge and uncertainty about new supply from US shale drillers and Opec, says The Economist. Brent crude traded at around $119 a barrel on Wednesday, up by more than 50% this year. The pullback from recent highs suggests some “speculative froth has blown off” the market, says Liam Halligan in The Daily Telegraph. But note also that “Western energy sanctions, while extremely serious, are not quite as tight as suggested by the belligerent political rhetoric”. It may be “the end of the year at the earliest” before Russian crude stops flowing to the UK and the EU. Sanctions have caused shipping delays and…