Chancellor Rachel Reeves is making a big speech about ‘growth’ today. Details released in advance show she will say that “growth won’t come without a fight” and will unveil new infrastructure projects costing £80bn. These include an ‘Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor,’ which she will claim could add up to £78bn to the UK economy by 2035, and which will be ‘championed’ by Sir Patrick Vallance, a former Scientific Adviser to the previous Government, who is now Science Minister. The ‘corridor’ plans include funding for an East-West railway linking Oxford with Cambridge; 4,500 new homes in Cambridge; £7.9bn in water company investment; prioritising a new cancer research hospital in Cambridge; a new Oxford growth commission; and upgrading the A428. Reeves will also welcome Cambridge University’s plans for a new large scale innovation hub, and laud the “huge economic potential for our nation’s growth prospects” of linking the two cities in what she will argue is the government’s industrial strategy in action. “Just 66 miles apart these cities are home to two of the best universities in the world, two of the most intensive innovation clusters in the world and the area is a hub for globally renowned science and technology firms in life sciences, manufacturing, and AI. It has the potential to be Europe’s Silicon Valley,” she will say. However, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said: “The biggest barriers to growth in this country are Rachel Reeves, Keir Starmer and their job destroying Budget. He added: “Hastily cobbled together announcements of growth in the 2030s will do nothing to help the businesses cutting jobs right now.”

Reeves’ speech today is also expected to back the expansion of Heathrow Airport despite opposition from within the Cabinet, among backbench MPs, and the Labour Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has been put before the media to promote the expansion, and has dismissed claims that backing for a third runway at Heathrow clashes with the Government’s climate and growth ambitions, saying the aviation industry “would still need to decarbonise” regardless of any approval for airport expansion. He told the BBC Radio 4’Today programme: “There is no tension between being ambitious on climate and being ambitious on growth. We need to decarbonise aviation come what may. There are jobs in that. There is a whole industry in sustainable aviation fuel which we are committed to. But the business case, the economic case for aviation, for a services led economy, for the fact that airports are our major ports in terms of goods entering the country, is very strong indeed”. He later told BBC Breakfast that the UK “can’t afford” to be a country that “doesn’t build runways”.

Steel, glass and chemical manufacturers have written to Industry Minister Sarah Jones to warn they will be driven out of business if they are forced to pay hiked net zero climate levies under Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s plans to cut factory emissions. The Energy Intensive Users Group said businesses “will not be able to bear these costs” unless they make significant technological breakthroughs or there are changes to the UK emissions trading scheme. Without these, there will be “damaging potential impacts on many energy-intensive industries,” the letter said. “It is essential to avoid any further de-industrialisation across our industrial communities, as we have seen over the last few decades,” it added, before going on to say urgent action and more funding was needed to develop carbon storage schemes to capture factory emissions, as well as infrastructure that will allow hydrogen to be substituted in key industrial processes at scale. The current emissions trading scheme places legal limits on how much carbon dioxide manufactures can create as waste and they are taxed for going over that limit. The policy was designed to incentivise lower emissions but has instead put British manufacturers a global disadvantage.

Reeves has also pledged £28.6m from the National Wealth Fund into reviving a historic Cornish tin mine, part of a £56m funding round into Cornish Metals to create 300 jobs and bring back the historic Cornish industry. Cornwall tin mining thrived for more than 400 years until the collapse of metal prices in 1998. Former Tory party treasurer Sir Mick Davis invested £25m to help reopen the mine three years’ ago. Reeves rebranded the UK Investment Bank as the National Wealth Fund (NWF next year, allocating £27.8bn in taxpayer cash to the institution, up from its previous £22bn spending power.

Doug Gurr, the new chair of the Competition and Markets Authority has pledged to speed up its decision making processes and bring in outside expertise. “Good decisions, clear decisions, rapid decisions — that’s what you tell us you need and that’s on us to deliver,” he wrote in the Financial Times. Gurr, a former Amazon executive who has been brought in to lead the body after Ministers ousted his predecessor last week, said “lengthy and uncertain investigations” were hamstringing businesses and leading to unnecessary costs.

The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is suggesting exams for solicitors should be made easier in order to boost diversity, after discovering that black and Asian candidates are getting lower pass rates in their Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), a two-part test which must be passed before candidates can qualify as solicitors in England and Wales. In the most recent round of exams last July, just 44% of candidates passed, in what marked the lowest pass rate since the qualifying test was first introduced in 2021. White students performed best, with a 57% pass rate, versus a 42% pass rate for Asian candidates and a 28% pass rate for Black trainees. SRA’s figures also showed that male candidates passed the SQE exams at higher rates than female candidates in the July round of exams, with men achieving a 52% pass rate compared to 46% for women.

HSBC Holdings is winding down its investment banking services in the UK, Europe and the Americas as part of "ongoing efforts to simplify HSBC and increase leadership in our areas of strength," an HSBC spokesperson told Reuters. In an email sent to staff and seen by Reuters and Bloomberg, HSBC Bank CEO Michael Roberts said the intention was to move to a "more competitive, scalable, financing-led model". While no details on any job losses were given in the memo, he acknowledged the news would be "unsettling" for many employees. Globally, investment banking accounts for around 6% of HSBC's total revenues.

London-listed UK auto parts engineer Dowlais has agreed a £1.16bn cash and share takeover by American Axle & Manufacturing.

OVO Energy has taken control of the brand from its founder, Irish entrepreneur Stephen Fitzpatrick, in a £150m deal to simplify its corporate structure, Sky News reports. Fitzpatrick, who founded OVO in 2009, will step aside from his role on the board of the energy supplier's holding company, and OVO will no longer have to pay an entity controlled by Fitzpatrick a "multimillion pound brand licensing payment" each year, the broadcaster says.

Quiz Clothing is likely to fall into administration before the end of next week after efforts to assemble a solvent rescue plan ran aground, Sky News reports, The fashion brand, which has just delisted from the London stock market, employs 1500 people.

Stella McCartney has bought back LVMH’s 49% stake in her fashion brand, but will continue to advise the luxury brand as a global ambassador on sustainability. LVMH originally acquired the minority stake in 2019, one year after McCartney purchased Kering’s 50% stake in her brand.

Boeing has reported an annual loss of $11.83bn for 2024, its largest deficit since global covid lockdowns in 2020. The plane maker has faced numerous challenges throughout the year, not least a two-month strike by engineers and machinists and ongoing fallout from production and safety issues that have dogged the firm. A midair panel detachment on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX early in 2024, and delays in certifying key models, including the 777X and smaller variants of the MAX, hindered revenue and production. Boeing's last profitable year was 2018. Since then it has lost over $20bn because of pandemic disruptions, safety concerns and production issues.

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