Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog.
The UK and France are set to co-chair a meeting with allies later today in a bid to strum up ways to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.
The vital waterway, which sits off Iran’s coast, sees around a fifth of the world’s oil supply flow through. The strait has had traffic all but halted since the war broke out at the end of February and has been cited as the biggest factor for the oil-charged inflation fears.
Around 40 countries are expected to join the meeting this afternoon, where Starmer is expected to said “focus on supporting the fragile ceasefire in the region and [in] ensuring shipping routes are reopened and secured through the Strait for the long term”.
Starmer will tell the meeting that “the unconditional and immediate reopening” of the strait “is a global responsibility”, Downing Street said.
It will round of a week where the government were handed a particular blow after the International Monetary Fund’s spring economic outlook slapped the nation with the biggest growth forecast downgrade of any G7 country.
Growth this year was revised down by 0.5 percentage points as trade disruption due to the Iran war has left the UK economy exposed.
We’ll be bringing you the latest updates on this and more.
Here’s a few of our top headlines for the morning:
- UK growth spurt ‘too good to be true’, analysts warn
- Barclays branded the bank most set to be ‘hurt’ by UK economic downgrades
- Allbirds shares rocket as shoe brand pivots to AI infrastructure
- Santander and TSB kick off mortgage rate cuts after Iran turmoil
- Ashmore share price plummets as investors ‘sit on their hands’
- Nick Candy eyes payday after record £275m home sale to Labour donor
- Dolce without Gabbana? What happens after a business breakup
