Economy shrinks in August as manufacturing sector slumps - as it happened

Follow live updates as markets await latest official GDP data

Related Video: EU says ball is still in the UK's court on getting Brexit deal done (PA)

Britain’s GDP fell 0.1 per cent in August from the previous month – the first drop since April – after an upwardly revised 0.4 per cent rise in July, official data showed. The figures put the economy on track for a modest expansion in the third quarter, after a surprise contraction in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, homeowners are increasingly shunning the property market because of heightened uncertainty about Britain's future, research has found.

The number of new homes coming to the market slumped to a three-year low in September while buyer demand also fell, a poll by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors found.

The live blog has ended.

Key Points

• New £20 note featuring painter Turner revealed as Bank of England’s most secure
• Boris Bus maker faces 'decision day'
• Housing market hit by 'endless wrangling around Brexit'
• US and China seek to end trade war in fresh talks
• Death of the high street? Not so, says HMV

[10 October 2019 12:39 · ben.chapman]

The US and China's top trade negotiators are resuming their talks today for the first time since late July to try to find a way out of a 15-month trade war as new irritants between the world's two largest economies threatened hopes for progress.

Chinese Vice premier Liu He, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin will seek to narrow differences enough to avoid a scheduled 15 October tariff rate increase on $250bn (£2bn) worth of Chinese goods.

But the atmosphere surrounding the talks was soured by the US Commerce Department's decision on Monday to blacklist 28 Chinese public security bureaus, technology and surveillance firms, citing human rights violations of Muslim minority groups in China's Xinjiang province. A day later, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials related to the Xinjiang issue.

If negotiations break down again, by 15 December, nearly all Chinese goods imports into the United States - more than $500bn (£400bn) - could be subject to punitive tariffs in the dispute that erupted during Trump's time in office.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday that the tariffs were working, forcing Beijing to pay attention to US concerns about its trade practices.

"We do not love tariffs, in fact we would prefer not to use them, but after years of discussions and no action, tariffs are finally forcing China to pay attention to our concerns," Ross said.

[10 October 2019 12:47 · ben.chapman]

New £20 note featuring painter Turner revealed as Bank of England’s most secure

The Bank of England has unveiled the design of the new £20 note, which features the painter JMW Turner as announced previously. The bank said it will be its most secure note yet.

The hard-wearing polymer note, which will be issued from 20 February 2020, has two windows and a two-colour foil. This design, used for the first time, makes the note very difficult to counterfeit, the central bank said on Thursday.

The new note, like the polymer £10, will also contain a tactile feature to help vision-impaired people identify the denomination.

[10 October 2019 13:12 · ben.chapman]

No-deal Brexit threatens Nissan's UK plant, boss says

Nissan has issued its strongest warning yet that it will shut down its UK plant in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The Japanese car maker's European business model would simply not be sustainable with 10 per cent tariffs.

ITV's Rachel Bullock is at the Sunderland factory. 

[10 October 2019 13:20 · ben.chapman]

China's billionaires get richer despite trade war

(Associated Press) An annual survey of China's wealthiest businesspeople found they got richer this year despite a tariff war with Washington and slowing economic growth.

The Hurun Report said Thursday the average net worth of China's richest 1,800 people rose 10 per cent over 2018 to $1.4bn.

Jack Ma, who retired last month as chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, was No. 1 with a net worth of $39bn. Ma Huateng of Tencent, a games and social media company, was second with $37bn.

The results reflected the growing importance of China's consumer market at a time when U.S. tariff hikes have battered export-oriented manufacturing.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma was second on the list with a $37bn fortune 

[10 October 2019 13:48 · ben.chapman]

UK economy on track for 0.5% growth in third quarter

Dr Garry Young, of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said:

“Despite better than expected GDP data, the underlying pace of growth in the United Kingdom is slow. The strongest source of private sector demand is household consumption, driven by real wage growth, but this is not sustainable without a pick-up in productivity growth, and this seems unlikely in the near term.”

[10 October 2019 14:20 · ben.chapman]

Chinese oil refiner issues $140m 'green' bond to fund new fossil fuel plant

Oil refiner Jiangsu Eastern Shenghong has just issued a 'green' bond worth 1 billion yuan (£115m) to finance the production of an oil refinery.

The plant will process 16 million tonnes of crude to feed a new petrochemical plant, Chinese official outlet People's Daily said.

Its the latest Chinese firm to take advantage of laughably lax rules around what constitutes a green investment.

Classifying a project as environmentally friendly allows companies to access money from funds that have excluded unsustainable industries from their portfolios. 

[10 October 2019 14:54 · ben.chapman]

Apple removes 'police tracking' app in Hong Kong as protest violence worsens

Apple on Wednesday removed an app that enabled protesters in Hong Kong to track police, a day after facing intense criticism from Chinese state media for it, plunging the technology giant deeper into the increasingly politicised atmosphere in China.

Apple said it was removing the app, called HKmap.live, from its iPhone App Store just days after approving it because authorities in Hong Kong said protesters were using it to attack police there.

A day earlier, People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial that accused Apple of aiding “rioters” in Hong Kong. “Letting poisonous software have its way is a betrayal of the Chinese people’s feelings,” said the article, which was written under a pseudonym, “Calming the Waves.”

[10 October 2019 15:08 · ben.chapman]

Donald Trump clearly wants to make Beijing believe he holds all the cards as trade talks get underway to resolve a 15-month dispute.

But is he bluffing? There are plenty of signs that the protectionist policies he has brought in are starting to do real damage to the US economy.

Most US (and global) growth forecasts are lower than they were when Trump started pushing up tariffs and firing out threats to trading partners.

eg:

[10 October 2019 15:16 · ben.chapman]

More female executives correlated with better company performance

The shares of companies with more female managers deliver higher returns, while a greater number of female executives is also correlated with stronger revenue growth and higher profit margins, according to a new report.

For the first part of their study, researchers at Credit Suisse looked at more than 3,000 companies from 56 countries. An analysis of their share prices showed that the stocks of firms where over 20 per cent of top managers are female rose more over the past decade than the shares of all companies, and much more than the shares of firms where women make up under 15 per cent of senior management.