Economy

Today’s top storiesUS defence secretary Lloyd Austin played down the significance of a potential Ukrainian retreat from the eastern city of Bakhmut, as Russia’s months-long offensive came closer to encircling the city.US private equity group Silver Lake and one of Canada’s largest pension funds have offered $12.4bn to buy experience management software company Qualtrics, in what could be one of the largest buyouts of the year.Boeing is joining forces with rival Airbus in the £1bn contest to replace Britain’s battlefield helicopter as concerns rise that the original in-service date of 2025 can no longer be met.For up-to-the-minute news updates, visit our live blogGood evening.China is aiming for growth of just 5 per cent this year, its lowest target in more than three decades, as the world’s second-largest economy tries to bounce back from pandemic disruption.The conservative figure, announced by outgoing premier Li Keqiang at the National People’s Congress, the annual rubber-stamp parliament which began yesterday, should be easy to hit as household consumption rebounds. But it is also further confirmation that the era of double-digit increases has come to an end. Investors were clearly disappointed, with copper, oil and iron ore leading global commodity markets lower on the news. It also took the gloss off last week’s data which showed manufacturing activity expanding at the fastest rate in a decade, with the country’s exporters on a major charm offensive at world trade fairs.Chinese defence companies at least will be happy with the promise of military spending increasing by more than 7 per cent. Taiwan not so much.Li also set a budget deficit target of 3 per cent of GDP, and pledged to create 12mn urban jobs and keep the unemployment rate at about 5.5 per cent. He also promised to expand market access for foreign investors and address ongoing problems in the country’s property sector.Li’s boss, President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, is expected to use the Congress to announce sweeping, centralising changes to his administration, with loyalists taking charge of key portfolios such as finance and tech.There was also acknowledgment from the platform that “many difficulties and challenges still confront us”. These include slowdowns in the rest of the world weakening demand for Chinese goods, alongside “escalating” attempts “to suppress and contain China’s development”, a reference to US controls on semiconductor technology. US chipmakers must now agree not to expand capacity in China for a decade to become eligible for new federal subsidies, while a new Congressional committee has been formed to investigate the “ideological, technological and military threat” of the Chinese Communist party. Just last week Washington added another two dozen Chinese groups to its trade blacklist, accusing them of assisting China’s military and surveillance tech exporters.Hong Kong, meanwhile, is coming up against stiff competition from Singapore in the battle to remain Asia’s leading financial hub.A lacklustre economic performance could also act as a brake on wider global recovery: the IMF is counting on China and India to account for half of global growth this year — with the US and euro area at just 10 per cent. Need to know: UK and Europe economyUK construction activity was better than expected in February, according to new PMI survey data that showed the highest growth rate in nine months as the outlook for commercial projects improved. On a more downbeat note, the government’s pledge to build 40 hospitals is looking ever more hollow as inflation eats in to the budget. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is set to use his March 15 Budget to give households more help with energy bills but economic forecasts suggest he will have little room for big giveaways. Chief economics commentator Martin Wolf says the challenge of “levelling up” of regional inequalities is even more difficult than widely thought.

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European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde warned that underlying price pressures would remain “sticky in the short term” and signalled that further interest rate rises were very likely as “inflation is a monster that we need to knock on the head”.Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections, with her liberal Reform party taking 37 of 101 seats. The country of 1.3mn million people, which borders Russia, has been one of the EU’s most vocal supporters of Ukraine.Need to know: Global economyColumnist Rana Foroohar says the conventional wisdom that America leads on innovation and Europe on regulation has been reversed as the US tightens control over sectors such as tech, pharma and finance.As Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro approaches his tenth anniversary as president, our Big Read explains how he remains very much in control, using both old-fashioned repression and more modern techniques such as AI-generated media content.

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Need to know: businessThe boss of BP’s US business insisted that the company was not cashing in on high oil prices and was sticking with its promised transition away from fossil fuels.US-listed tech groups face a cash crunch after burning through billions from IPOs. As the proceeds from a period of frenzied dealmaking start to run low, many face a choice between expensive capital raises, cost cutting, or takeovers.Business in Northern Ireland hailed last week’s Brexit trade deal with the EU, but for farmers in England, hope is fading fast for any kind of Brexit dividend.The boss of Harrods said he was confident that the luxury department store would prosper in a downturn because “the rich get richer in a recession”. The remarks follow bullish reports from luxury companies such as Hermès and LVMH.A new FT film documents the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange. “Regulators fell for it, venture capitalists fell for it, celebrities fell for it — everyone fell for the legend of Sam.”

Video: FTX: the legend of Sam Bankman-Fried | FT Film

The World of WorkHow should companies carry out mass lay-offs without inflicting lasting damage on morale and future growth? US financial editor Brooke Masters says few companies appear to be trying to find creative ways to cut labour costs.News that women now hold many more board seats in UK listed companies is welcome, but this means it will be become harder than ever to argue there are not enough with experience to be a chief executive or chair, says columnist Pilita Clarke. Dilbert, the cartoon character who has chronicled cubicle culture since the 1990s, has been handed his pink slip. The strip has been dropped by US newspapers after its creator waded into a race controversy.Scott Adams and his comic creation Dilbert © APSome good newsA deal to protect the nearly 60 per cent of the world’s oceans that lie outside national boundaries has been agreed after nearly two decades of on-off negotiations. The High Seas Treaty was described by the UN as a “massive success for multilateralism and “an example of the transformation our world needs and the people we serve demand”.The UN High Seas Treaty will be central to enforcing pledges made at the UN COP15 biodiversity conference to preserve a third of the sea and land by 2030, known as the 30 by 30 pledge © Brian Inganga/AP More

Last week, Ed teed up an important question about whether Biden is chasing too many complicated economic policies at the moment. My quick response was no — there is real synergy to what he’s doing — and I’d like to expand on that topic here.Let me start by setting the context for what he’s doing. I think about markets, economies, and capitalism in general not as being handed down on stone tablets, but as systems that evolve and change to fit the needs of the time. 18th century mercantilism gave way to 19th century laissez faire philosophy, as nation building moved into a wave of globalisation. Keynesianism gave way to the Chicago school when we needed a bit less government and more animal spirits. Systems reach critical mass because they are purpose-built for the challenges of the day. Then, eventually, the pendulum swings too far in one direction, and we need a new set of policies, which eventually become its own system.We are now at such a turning point. I’ve written many times about how the last half century was predicated on the idea that capital, goods and people would cross borders in search of the most profitable returns, and — crucially — end up where it was most productive for our economy and society as a whole. That philosophy, neoliberalism, gave us more growth at a global level than ever before. But the system created substantial amounts of inequality within nations.It also created global imbalances between capital and labour, which gave us everything from the financial crisis (imbalances create speculation) to a cost of living crisis (imbalances create asset inflation that wage inflation can’t match) to a geopolitical crisis (production/consumption imbalances between the US and Asia are at the heart of this).That reality frames everything Biden must do. You can’t look at his chessboard in incremental terms. This isn’t politics as usual when you might think about taking on, say, healthcare or real financial reform, as was the Obama paradigm. (Obama should have done the latter rather than the former at the time, in my opinion; because he failed on finance, he lost the trust of a lot of the party and the people, and the rest of his agenda was doomed — but that’s another Note!).Rather, Biden has to start pulling lots of levers at all once to have a hope of moving the dial enough to get the US to a fundamentally different place in the next decade. America has to shift its mix of production and consumption in order to change its fiscal picture and raise wages (see my column here about why that must involve manufacturing subsidies). It needs to innovate by iterating, which means making things again in order to grow. It needs to make sure that the fastest growing industries, in the care sector, create good jobs.Gina Raimondo’s plan to link the two by pushing business to provide on-site childcare is actually genius, because many businesses I speak with already want to do just that (how else will they get more female labour into the workplace, which is crucial to improving GDP growth and plugging the labour gap). They just want some incentives to do so, and using the CHIPs money to give them that is low-hanging fruit.I could keep going with all the reasons why the White House’s multipronged policies make sense. All the things that made the old world possible — cheap labour, cheap capital and cheap energy — are going away, and fast. We must understand and map a new and more regional world, with multiple political economies. We must restructure supply chains, increase resiliency, and even prepare for a post-dollar world. We must move from financialised growth to the real thing. None of this is incremental. Biden is right to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the problem.Ed, I was struck by your column on Jimmy Carter the other week, and all the ways in which we misunderstand that president. One that I might have added is the way in which Carter’s administration actually began some of the financial deregulation (of interest rates, for example, and the overturning of Regulation Q which started the process of financialisation) that Reagan gets credit for. What struck me was that in many periods of seismic change, the administration that ultimately gets credit for something is often not the one that began the changes.So, my question to you is both futuristic and historic. Calling on the several decades of history that you’ve been looking at for your upcoming book, and looking into the crystal ball of the future, do you think the Biden era will be remembered as the beginning of a post-neoliberal era, à la the Reagan-Thatcher shift? Or will that title go to some younger, different president in the future?Recommended readingI was struck by Chris Giles’ recent column on why Britain’s London problem isn’t about how much economic and political air is sucked up by the capital, and what local cities can do to get a slice of the pie, but rather how the UK can help London get more business from international competitor cities. I recently watched the David Bowie documentary Moonage Dream, which is one of the best depictions of the artistic spirit that I’ve ever seen (I’m a huge Bowie fan, though, so I am certainly biased).I’m enjoying Mariana Mazzucato’s latest book, The Big Con, written with Rosie Collington, which looks at how the consulting industry has taken governments to the cleaners. It’s amazing to me that companies and public sector officials alike are so worried about making the wrong decision that they are willing to pay tons of money to people who know less to make it for them. Edward Luce responds Rana, just to clarify, I was not criticising Biden for “chasing too many complicated economic policies”: it was a specific critique of his over-burdening industrial policy with too many conditions. I continue to think that will subtract from his efforts. I don’t dispute Biden’s chief goals — to reduce US inequality, improve employee rights (mandatory parental leave etc) and kick-start the shift to a greener economy. Nor do I think these are complicated. But governance is about execution particularly when it involves detailed state intervention. The media needs to pay more attention to that. Will history recall the Biden era as the end of neoliberalism? As you know I prefer the more precise term of anti-globalisation, which is happening in the US. But the backlash against free trade began under Trump, not Biden. Biden’s approach to globalisation is Trumpism with a human face. You quite rightly point out that a lot of the deregulation that we associate with Ronald Reagan actually began under Carter. His economic policy was, and remains, hard to classify. Unlike say Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, FDR’s New Deal, or even Bill Clinton’s Third Way, we have no name for Carter’s economic approach. That is because it was confusing. He vetoed spending bills, deregulated large sectors of the economy, made heavy, and game-changing, investments in the new energy technology, and tried to drive special interests out of Washington. His legacy was mixed and hard to summarise. Reagan’s was simple by comparison. I would give Biden relatively high marks for his performance so far. Since the midterms, we have moved past the time of legislating and into the phase of implementing. That’s the harder part and he has to be single-minded in his execution. The tensions between Washington’s talk of “friend-shoring” and the protectionism of its Inflation Reduction Act and the Buy American drive are making that goal far more difficult. We are also fast approaching the point where the US cannot talk with a straight face of upholding the “rules-based international order” when it keeps trashing those rules and disabling the World Trade Organization. As I say, this began under Trump. The biggest strike against Biden is that he is continuing what Trump started. Your feedback And now a word from our Swampians . . . In response to “America — this is no way to run an industrial policy”:“Biden is chasing hares, they are elusive and can outrun him.” — Reader shetland37 More

Jay Newman was a senior portfolio manager at Elliott Management and is author of the finance thriller Undermoney.William S. Burroughs could have been thinking of sovereign debt investors when he quipped that “sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts.” The antics of the New York State legislature are a case in point.Out of nowhere, a package of proposed bills that would dramatically undermine the enforceability of sovereign debt contracts governed by New York law are wending their way through the New York State Assembly and Senate.This mischief appears in three draft laws. First, the so-called “orderly restructuring” bill (A2970, S4747) would cap creditor recoveries at an (indeterminate) amount equal to what the US federal government might have received had it been a creditor — and retroactively reduce existing judgments. Here is the ostensible purpose:. . . The legislature finds that it is a longstanding policy of the United States and the state of New York, as the world’s leading financial center, to support orderly, collaborative and effective international debt relief for developing countries with unsustainable levels of debt. Debt distress, debt crises, and disorderly default are associated with unacceptable human suffering, economic decline, and financial market and payment systems disruption. Moreover, debt restructuring is ineffective and does not lead to sustainable outcomes when it is not perceived as equitable or legitimate by stakeholders in borrowing and lending countries. Additionally, public creditors are unlikely to participate in debt restructuring initiatives unless there is fair burden sharing among all public and private creditors, which is essential to the legitimacy and effectiveness of debt relief initiatives. . . . Second, the Assembly is considering a comprehensive regulatory scheme that would empower New York state courts to supervise sovereign debt restructurings (A2102) while giving debtors the exclusive power to propose a restructuring plan. For good measure, that law would affect the entire existing sovereign debt stock, since it would apply retroactively and explicitly override the bond contract. Third, Assembly bill A9317 (which has not yet been reintroduced in this session), would reinvigorate the antiquated, discredited notion of champerty by requiring courts to determine a creditor’s subjective intent and creating a presumption of wrongful purpose when a bondholder has any history of purchasing sovereign debt at a discount or declining to participate in a sovereign restructuring.The stated motivations make little sense. One sponsor objects to so-called “vulture funds” buying Puerto Rican debt. But the bill applies much more broadly: not only to unincorporated territories, but also to foreign countries, provinces, and states (perhaps anticipating debt problems that New York might experience if current trends continue).Putting aside serious questions of state and federal constitutionality — and the risible notion that New York state courts are competent to oversee sovereign debt restructurings — the threat that these proposals might be signed into law needs to be taken seriously. Constitutional challenges take years (and cost millions of dollars in legal fees) to resolve. If anything like these bills is enacted, the damage will long since have been done.Since over half of all sovereign bond contracts expressly rely on New York law and New York courts, with the stroke of a pen, the proposed changes would make it impossible to enforce those contracts in accordance with their terms — upending both the primary and the secondary markets for New York law bonds.For decades, borrowers and lenders have expressly chosen to have their agreements adjudicated in New York, under New York law, because New York has been the gold standard: unequivocally protecting property rights, recognising the sanctity of contract, and ensuring impartial, predictable, and consistent administration of justice. If those foundational principals change, underwriters, bond buyers, and issuers will flee. It won’t take long for more attractive jurisdictions, like London, to pick up the slack, causing New York to lose business — and tax revenue.In addition, New York politicians can expect a wide range of unintended consequences: US pension funds and individual investors will suffer losses, and New York’s status as one of the world’s foremost commercial centres will be eroded. It’s not a stretch to foresee a negative impact on the attractiveness of the US dollar as a reserve currency — a level of instability that is particularly ill-advised given the willingness of China to wield sovereign debt as a coercive tool of foreign policy.Given that these dramatic changes seem palpably absurd, you’d be forgiven for wondering what’s happening behind the curtain of lobbying, influence peddling, and political contributions. Since New York state would be a certain loser, who would benefit? Who really wins? Perversely, the biggest beneficiaries of the degradation of America’s premier financial and commercial centre as a bastion of contractual and property rights will not be sovereign borrowers, much less their citizens. Rather, the biggest beneficiaries would be America’s enemies. China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea are intent on degrading America’s status as a bulwark of the rule of law and undermining the dollar as a reserve currency. That all fits neatly with a movement — already well under way — to develop alternatives to the US dollar for settlement of international financial transactions and trade. And China, a major creditor to the world’s poorest countries, has a strong interest in undercutting the value of claims owed to other lenders. It’s enough to be suspicious of who is really driving this change. Sovereign lending is risky enough without officious meddling that upends longstanding legal frameworks and expectations. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Women have held just 12% of the top jobs at 33 of the biggest multilateral institutions since 1945, and more than a third of those bodies, including all four large development banks, have never been led by a woman, a new study released on Monday shows.Five of the bodies have only had a woman president once in their history, and that includes the current head of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, according to the report prepared by GWL Voices for Change and Inclusion, an advocacy group made up of 62 current and former senior women leaders.The study, to be released during this week’s meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, called for proportional representation of women at every level of multilateral organizations, from field offices to headquarters, as well as in secretariats and governing bodies.”The truth is that numbers matter,” said Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a former Ecuadorian foreign minister who served as president of the U.N. General Assembly from 2018-2019. “We are 50% of the world’s population so it’s a demographic justice thing, to start with,” she told Reuters in an interview on Friday. “But I also believe that women bring this combination of leadership, wisdom and empathy, and sometimes, an even greater understanding of what is happening in the world.”Since 1945, the 33 institutions studied have had 382 leaders, but only 47 were women, the report showed. And despite recent progress, only one-third of the institutions are currently headed by women.GWL Voices said it would release a more extensive version of the report in September that would also look at the senior management teams and governing bodies of the 33 institutions. It said it was pushing for governance reforms that could “accelerate the transition to gender-balanced leadership.”The report listed 13 institutions that have never been headed by a woman since the end of World War Two, when most of these bodies were created, including the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.Espinosa said it was disappointing that the United States, which is the largest shareholder in the World Bank and has historically picked its president, last month nominated a man, former Mastercard (NYSE:MA) Chief Executive Ajay Banga, for the job, despite urgent calls from her group and other World Bank member states to chose a female leader.Espinosa said she supported having someone like Banga, who was born and educated in India and spent much of his early career there, at the helm of the World Bank, but there were hundreds of women with similar background and qualifications. More

The ECB has raised rates by 3 percentage points since July and flagged a 50 basis point increase for March. It has left the door open to subsequent moves, which it said would be decided on “meeting by meeting” and be “data dependent.” Holzmann, an outspoken conservative – or hawk in policy terms – however said that based on current trends, he would favour 50 basis point moves in March, May, June and July. “I expect it to take a very long time for inflation to come down,” Holzmann was quoted on Monday as saying. “My hope is that within the next 12 months we will have reached the peak of interest rates.”The four steps advocated by Holzmann would take the deposit rate to 4.5%, well above the 4% peak rate priced in by markets, a level no other policymaker has so far advocated in public. “If we want to get inflation back to two percent in the foreseeable future, we have to be restrictive,” Holzmann said, arguing that only a 4% deposit rate will start restricting growth. Holzmann also called on the ECB to accelerate the reduction of the bank’s balance sheet, possibly through ending full reinvestments in its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) earlier than planned. All debt maturing in the PEPP scheme is now set to be fully reinvested into the market through 2024. More

Xi Jinping has called Vladimir Putin his best friend. But now the Russian leader is in urgent need of help from China. Putin’s army is bogged down in Ukraine and running short of ammunition. Should Xi prove that he is a friend indeed by supplying Russia with weapons? China’s decision will say a lot about how it sees the future of the world. A choice to supply Russia with weapons would suggest that China believes that intensified rivalry with the US is unavoidable — and perhaps desirable. By contrast, a decision not to give Russia weapons would indicate that China still believes that tensions with the US are manageable and that globalisation can be saved.Influential voices in Beijing fully understand the risks of supplying Russia with the crucial munitions that Moscow’s forces are running short of — such as artillery shells and drones. In the Financial Times last week, Zhou Bo, a former colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, wrote: “If Beijing takes Moscow’s side in the conflict, then we are already in the dawn of the third world war.”Put like that, a Chinese decision to supply Russia with weapons sounds inconceivable. And yet the US government believes that there is a serious debate under way in Beijing — and that China may ultimately make this fateful decision. The reason that Xi might decide to dramatically increase support for Putin goes back to the “no limits” partnership announced by the Russian and Chinese leaders in February 2022 — three weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. More important than the announcement of the partnership was the shared analysis that underpinned it. Putin and Xi laid out a common understanding of the world. They both see the US as the central threat to their countries’ ambitions and political regimes. Fighting back against American power is the common task that unites them. Xi has visited Putin more than he has visited any other world leader. The worst-case scenario for him would be the fall of Putin and his replacement with a pro-western leader. That still feels like a remote possibility. But, even if Putin remains in power, a humiliated and weakened Russia would make the US look resurgent and China more isolated. Some in Beijing argue that once Russia had been dealt with, America would turn on China.There are two further reasons why China might risk propping up Putin. The first is that Xi’s closest advisers might have more faith than Zhou that China can control the escalation risk. They will argue that, once Washington understands that Beijing will not let Moscow lose, the west will push Ukraine to make a peace settlement on terms acceptable to Russia.The second reason why China might risk a global conflict is bleaker. Nationalists in Beijing may believe that outright confrontation with the US has already begun. The CIA says that Xi has already instructed the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Joe Biden has said several times that the US would defend Taiwan, if it was attacked.Of course, there is a difference between China developing the capability to invade Taiwan and making a firm decision to attack. But if the gloomier western analysts are correct — and China is moving closer to invasion — then it would make sense for Beijing to support the Russian war effort. If the west has to keep pouring military resources into Ukraine, it might have less available to defend Taiwan.However, the downside for China of supplying Russia with weapons is also clear. The anti-China mood in Washington, already very powerful, would go into overdrive. Every form of pressure that the Americans could think of would be exerted on China. The restrictions on technology exports that are already in place would be supplemented by much broader sanctions.Beijing would also lose any hope of driving a wedge between the EU and the US. Chinese military support for Russia would be seen as a direct threat to the security of Europe. EU restrictions on trade and investment ties with China would surely follow swiftly.The Chinese know that western corporations and consumers are too dependent on them to attempt a complete economic decoupling. But if trade with the west dropped by even 30 per cent, the results would be felt in higher unemployment in China — which would worry a government that is acutely sensitive to displays of popular unrest. For that reason, China may choose an uneasy compromise. It will continue to present itself as a neutral peace broker in Ukraine, assuring visitors like Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that it has no intention of supplying Russia with munitions. Meanwhile, it may attempt to funnel weaponry to Russia indirectly, perhaps through third countries such as Iran or North Korea. The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, visited Xi in Beijing last month — the first visit to China by an Iranian president in 20 years.But a policy of covert or deniable Chinese military support to Russia is no magic bullet for Beijing. It might be too restricted to turn the tide of the war in Putin’s favour. And it would still be vulnerable to detection by the US. Indirect Chinese military support for Russia could ultimately be a circuitous route to the same destination: direct confrontation with [email protected] More

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s proposals to loosen capital rules for insurers will increase the chances of an insurance company failing by 20% in a given year, the Bank of England has told lawmakers, reiterating its caution over the government’s plan.Following Britain’s departure from the European Union, its finance ministry has proposed easing capital requirements for insurers to unlock billions of pounds for investing in infrastructure to boost the economy.Easing the so-called Solvency II rules inherited from the EU is seen as a key “Brexit dividend” for the financial sector, and the ministry overrode warnings from the Bank of England, saying policyholders would still be protected.The BoE looked at the impact of the government’s plan to ease the risk margin, a capital buffer life insurers must hold to move policies to another insurer in the event of a collapse.BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said in a letter dated Feb. 22 to parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, published on Monday, that “in the round” over a one-year period, the estimated capital release of 14 billion pounds ($16.80 billion) could lead to an increase in the annual probability of failure of approximately 0.1 percentage points.”This means that over a one-year period… the probability that a life insurance firm would hold sufficient capital to withstand the solvency standard stress level will be 99.4% when compared to the current level – a relative increase in the probability of failure of around 20%,” Bailey said.If the BoE’s proposed reform had gone ahead, which advocated easing the risk margin by less than the government proposes, then “less than half of this increase would have occurred”, Bailey said.”If a future failure occurs, it would be difficult to predict the quantum of losses, nor is it certain that it would be limited to a single firm,” Bailey said.The BoE will implement the ministry’s proposed reforms of Solvency II if approved by parliament, Bailey said.($1 = 0.8335 pounds) More

The CBI said it had already conducted an internal investigation into Danker’s workplace behaviour after receiving a complaint in January, which it judged did not require escalation to a disciplinary process. However, the CBI said fresh concerns about Danker’s behaviour were brought to its attention on March 2. “We have now taken steps to initiate an independent investigation into these new matters. Tony Danker asked to step aside from his role as Director-General of the CBI while the independent investigation into these matters takes place,” the CBI said.Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which first reported that Danker had stepped aside, said the January complaint was submitted by a female CBI employee, and that the more recent allegations had been brought by other members of staff.The new investigation would be led by an external law firm, the newspaper added.”It is important to stress that until this investigation is complete, any new allegations remain unproven,” the CBI said.Danker, who worked at McKinsey & Company between 1998 and 2008 and for The Guardian and a business lobby group before joining the CBI in 2020, expressed regret in a statement on social media.”It’s been mortifying to hear that I have caused offence or anxiety to any colleague. It was completely unintentional, and I apologise profusely,” he said.”I therefore support the decision we’ve taken to review any new allegations independently. And I have decided to step aside while the review takes place and will cooperate fully with it.” More