STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOSLONDON - British companies are their most confident since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a survey that also showed they planned to keep on raising prices and staff pay, adding to worries for the Bank of England about high inflation.
"The bounce in economic optimism this month is the stand-out point," Hann-Ju Ho, senior economist at Lloyds Bank, said. The BoE raised rates for the 14th time in a row this month to counter an inflation rate running at almost 7%. But the quarter-percentage-point increase was smaller than June's 50-basis-point hike.
Britain has avoided a widely forecast recession so far this year but worries about an economic slowdown grew last week when a measure of business activity in August fell to its lowest since January 2021.