Closing post
Time to wrap up….
A month of unrelenting rain in many parts of the country resulted in British shoppers spending much less than expected in April, with fewer treating themselves to clothes and big-ticket items.
The Office for National Statistics blamed the wet weather for the 2.3% decrease in the amount of goods bought, compared with March, which was much steeper than the 0.4% decline forecast by analysts.
Furniture, clothing, sports equipment, and games and toy shops experienced the biggest monthly sales drops, with non-food store sales falling 4.1%, the joint largest drop since January 2021. Retailers blamed low footfall amid bad weather, the high cost of living despite a decline in the annual pace of inflation to 2.3%, and high fuel prices.
Petrol sales dropped at their fastest rate since October 2021, while food stores sales volumes fell for the third month in a row.
The energy price cap in Great Britain will fall 7% to the equivalent of £1,568 a year this summer after a drop in wholesale gas prices.
Set by the energy regulator Ofgem, the cap reflects the average annual dual-fuel bill for 29m households and takes effect from July until the end of September.
Set quarterly, the cap will fall by £122 in July from its current level of £1,690, about £500 less than the cap a year earlier, easing the pressure on household finances. However, the cap is more than £400 more than it was three years ago, before the energy crisis.
The energy security secretary, Claire Coutinho, seized on the fall in the price cap as evidence that the pressure on household spending was easing in the run-up to the general election.
She also claimed that Labour’s plans for a state-owned Great British Energy company, focusing on renewables, would “hike your bills and raise your taxes”.
Elsewhere….here’s the economic data to watch out for over the coming weeks:
UK drivers have been warned to expect one of the busiest bank holiday weekends on the roads in years, with more than 20m leisure journeys forecast over the next four days.
Elon Musk has criticised US government tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, describing the levies as “not good” and a distortion of the car market.
The Co-operative Bank brand is on track to disappear from UK high streets, after Coventry Building Society confirmed it would acquire the bank from its hedge-fund owners in a £780m deal.
Reuters: Woman jailed for laundering bitcoin in UK from £5bn China fraud
A woman accused of converting bitcoin into cash and property to help hide the proceeds of a £5bn fraud was jailed for nearly seven years on Friday for money laundering after a trial in a London court, Reuters reports.
Prosecutors said Wen Jian helped hide the source of money allegedly stolen from nearly 130,000 Chinese investors in fraudulent wealth schemes between 2014 and 2017.
She was not alleged to have been involved in the underlying fraud, which prosecutors said was masterminded by another woman who Wen believed was independently wealthy.
As part of their investigation, British police seized wallets holding more than 61,000 bitcoin – making it one of the largest cryptocurrency seizures by law enforcement worldwide.
The 61,000 bitcoin was worth around £1.4bn when police gained access in 2021, prosecutors said during Wen’s trial. It is now worth over £3bn.
Wen, 42, denied three counts of money laundering and said she did not have any knowledge of criminality linked to the bitcoin.
She was found guilty by jurors of one count in March following a trial at Southwark Crown Court. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other counts.
Wen was sentenced on Friday to six years and eight months in prison for the single count of money laundering of which she was found guilty.
