Closing post
Time for a recap.
It’s been a relatively busy day for the end of August.
First we had news that trade minister Kemi Badenoch was heading to a meeting of G20 ministers in Jaipur, where she was expected to progress talks towards a post-Brexit trade deal with India.
That was soon overshadowed by a flurry of PMI data, first from France and Germany, both of which suffered further contraction in services and manufacturing activity. Germany, in particular, suffered its steepest drop in business activity since May 2020.
Then came eurozone data, which showed private sector activity slid to its lowest level since November 2020, with the composite PMI falling to 47.0 in August from July’s 48.6.
The UK did not escape the gloom, with data showing an unexpected contraction in UK business activity, that experts said had raised the risk of recession.
By mid-morning, though, the NatWest/Farage scandal came back into the spotlight, as the banking group revealed pay arrangements for its ousted boss Alison Rose.
The bank said Rose would benefit from a £2.4m pay package while she was on a 12-month notice period. However, the lender could stop payments, or force her to repay some of that money, depending on the outcome of an investigation related to the planned closure of Farage’s accounts at Coutts, its private bank for the ultra-wealthy, Coutts.
Farage said it was a “sick joke.”
That’s all from the live blog today. We’ll be back from 8am Thursday morning. -KM
Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre thinktank, said Rose’s payout was “totally galling as a reward for a serious error of judgement.”
But even if Rose is forced to forego it, she will still have over £11m from her time as CEO to fall back on.
What the case really shows is that executives and other top earners are normal, fallible individuals who can make these kind of mistakes.
Some navigate their tenure successfully, some don’t but none merit the superhuman pay awards or the outsized share of total incomes that they consume.
