Finance

The Omaha-based conglomerate’s operating earnings totaled $10.761 billion last quarter, 40.6% higher than the number from the same quarter a year ago.
Berkshire held a record level of cash at the end of September — $157.2 billion.
The “Oracle of Omaha” has been taking advantage of surging bond yields, buying up short-term Treasury bills yielding at least 5%.
Geico, the crown jewel of Berkshire’s insurance empire, reported another profitable quarter.

An Andy Warhol-like print of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett hangs outside a clothing stand during the first in-person annual meeting since 2019 of Berkshire Hathaway Inc in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. April 30, 2022.
Scott Morgan | Reuters

Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday reported a big jump in third-quarter operating earnings, while sitting on a record amount of cash as Warren Buffett saw few dealmaking opportunities.
The Omaha-based conglomerate’s operating earnings — which encompass profits made from the myriad of wholly owned businesses such as insurance, railroads and utilities — totaled $10.761 billion last quarter. That’s 40.6% higher than the $7.651 billion earned from the same quarter a year ago.

Berkshire held a record level of cash at the end of September — $157.2 billion — topping the $149.2 billion high set in the third quarter of 2021.
The “Oracle of Omaha” has been taking advantage of surging bond yields, buying up short-term Treasury bills yielding at least 5%. The conglomerate owned $126.4 billion worth of such investments at the end of the third quarter, compared to about $93 billion at the end of last year.
Buyback activity continued to slow down as Berkshire shares roared to a record high during the quarter. The firm spent $1.1 billion to repurchase shares, bringing the nine-month total to approximately $7 billion.
Berkshire Class A shares have rallied nearly 14% this year. After reaching an all-time high on Sept. 19, shares have fallen about 6% from the peak.

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Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares

Geico, the crown jewel of Berkshire’s insurance empire and Buffett’s “favorite child,” reported another profitable quarter with underwriting earnings of $1.1 billion. The auto insurer is in the middle of a turnaround after losing market share to competitor Progressive.

BNSF, however, saw a 15% decline in earnings as the railroad division grappled with lower volumes and higher costs.
Investment loss
Buffett’s company did post a significant investment loss of $24.1 billion in the third quarter, which largely came from a decline in its big Apple stake. Shares of the iPhone maker fell 11.7% during the quarter but have rebounded over 3% since.
As per usual, Berkshire Hathaway asked investors to look past the quarterly fluctuations in Berkshire’s equity portfolio.
“The amount of investment gains/losses in any given quarter is usually meaningless and delivers figures for net earnings (losses) per share that can be extremely misleading to investors who have little or no knowledge of accounting rules,” the company said in a statement.
While Berkshire scored a sizable increase in operating earnings, the conglomerate did acknowledge the negative economic impact from the pandemic, as well as geopolitical risks and inflation pressures.
“To varying degrees, our operating businesses have been impacted by government and private sector actions to mitigate the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 virus and its variants as well as by the development of geopolitical conflicts, supply chain disruptions and government actions to slow inflation,” Berkshire said. “The economic effects from these events over longer terms cannot be reasonably estimated at this time.” More

Among Hispanic Americans, the jobless rate rose 0.2% to 4.8%.
Black Americans, the group with the highest jobless percentage in America, saw their unemployment rate tick up 0.1% to 5.8% last month.

People walk through downtown Manhattan in New York City on Dec. 2, 2022.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The labor market showed greater deterioration for Hispanic workers, whose unemployment rate rose more than that of the U.S.’, according to data released Friday by the Department of Labor.
The overall unemployment rate rose 0.1% to 3.9% last month, the highest level since January 2022, against expectations that it would hold steady at 3.8%. Among Hispanic Americans, the jobless rate rose 0.2% to 4.8%.

Arrows pointing outwards

Black Americans, the group with the highest jobless percentage in America, saw their unemployment rate tick up 0.1% to 5.8% last month. The record low for Black unemployment is 5.4% in October 2019.
“When averages tick downwards, there’s often larger movement at the bottom end of the wage distribution,” Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist, told CNBC. “Low-wage workers, less-educated workers and those facing barriers to employment suffer the brunt of any slowdown in the labor market.”
Black and Hispanic Americans were hit particularly hard by the business shutdowns in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the unemployment rate for Black workers peaking at 16.8% in 2020 and the Hispanic jobless rate surging as high as 18.8%. The overall unemployment rate hit a high of 14.7% in April 2020.

Asian Americans, while having the lowest jobless rate among different demographic groups, saw the biggest percentage increase in unemployment. The rate rose 0.3% to 3.1% in October.
The Federal Reserve, which has a dual mandate that includes full employment, has deliberately tried to slow the economy to tackle inflation. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said earlier this week that slower growth and a softer labor market are still “likely” needed to tame price pressures.

The participation rate for Hispanic workers declined to 66.9% last month from 67.3% in September. Overall, the labor force participation rate declined slightly to 62.7%, while the labor force contracted by 201,000.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war could affect European economies via lower regional trade, tighter financial conditions, higher energy prices and lower consumer confidence, Goldman Sachs said.
Concerns are growing among economists that the conflict could spill over and engulf the Middle East, with Israel and Lebanon exchanging missiles, as Israel continues to bombard Gaza.

Armoured vehicles of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are seen during their ground operations at a location given as Gaza, as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in this handout image released on November 1, 2023. 
Israel Defense Forces | Reuters

The Israel-Hamas war could have a significant impact on economic growth and inflation in the euro zone unless energy price pressures remain contained, according to Goldman Sachs.
The ongoing hostilities could affect European economies via lower regional trade, tighter financial conditions, higher energy prices and lower consumer confidence, Europe Economics Analyst Katya Vashkinskaya highlighted in a research note Wednesday.

Concerns are growing among economists that the conflict could spill over and engulf the Middle East, with Israel and Lebanon exchanging missiles as Israel continues to bombard Gaza, resulting in massive civilian casualties and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
Although the tensions could affect European economic activity via lower trade with the Middle East, Vashkinskaya highlighted that the continent’s exposure is limited, given that the euro area exports around 0.4% of the GDP to Israel and its neighbors, while the British trade exposure is less than 0.2% of the GDP.
She noted that tighter financial conditions could weigh on growth and exacerbate the existing drag on economic activity from higher interest rates in both the euro area and the U.K. However, Goldman does not see a clear pattern between financial conditions and previous episodes of tension in the Middle East
The most important and potentially impactful way in which tensions could spill over into the European economy is through oil and gas markets, Vashkinskaya said.

“Since the current conflict broke out, commodities markets have seen increased volatility, with Brent crude oil and European natural gas prices up by around 9% and 34% at the peak respectively,” she said.

Goldman’s commodities team assessed a set of downside scenarios in which oil prices could rise by between 5% and 20% above the baseline, depending on the severity of the oil supply shock.
“A persistent 10% oil price increase usually reduces Euro area real GDP by about 0.2% after one year and boosts consumer prices by almost 0.3pp over this time, with similar effects observed in the U.K.,” Vashkinskaya said.
“However, for the drag to appear, oil prices must remain consistently elevated, which is already in question, with the Brent crude oil price almost back at pre-conflict levels at the end of October.”
Gas price developments present a more acute challenge, she suggested, with the price increase driven by a reduction in global LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports from Israeli gas fields and the current gas market less able to respond to adverse supply shocks.
“While our commodities team’s estimates point to a sizeable increase in European natural gas prices in case of a supply downside scenario in the range of 102-200 EUR/MWh, we believe that the policy response to continue existing or re-start previous energy cost support policies would buffer the disposable income hit and support firms, if such risks were to materialize,” Vashkinskaya said.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that knock-on effects of the conflict on energy markets posed a potential risk to the central bank’s efforts to rein in inflation.
“So far, I would say, we haven’t seen a marked increase in energy prices, and that’s obviously good,” Bailey told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche. “But it is a risk. It obviously is a risk going forward.”
Oil prices have been volatile since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and the World Bank warned in a quarterly update on Monday that crude oil prices could rise to more than $150 a barrel if the conflict escalates.
General consumer confidence is the final potential channel for spillover affects, according to the Wall Street bank, and Vashkinskaya noted that the euro area experienced a substantial deterioration in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022.
The same effect has not been historically observed alongside outbreaks of elevated tensions between Israel and Hamas, but Goldman’s news-based measure of conflict-related uncertainty reached record highs in October. More

Wefox, which sells insurance plans via an online platform, raised $55 million in debt financing from Deutsche Bank and Unicredit.
As Wefox didn’t raise equity, its valuation remains unchanged at $4.5 billion.
It brings the total amount of funding Wefox has raised so far this year to $160 million.

Wefox CEO Julian Teicke.

Wefox, the $4.5 billion German insurance technology group, has raised $55 million of fresh funding from Deutsche Bank and UniCredit, two anonymous sources familiar with the deal told CNBC.
The company, which sells insurance plans via an online platform, raised the fresh cash in a debt financing deal from the two European lenders, according to the sources, who were not authorized to disclose the information publicly.

The deal was structured as a convertible debt agreement, meaning that the debt will be converted into equity when Wefox next raises cash, the sources told CNBC.
The fresh funding follows on from a $55 million debt round Wefox raised from JPMorgan and Barclays and a $55 million internal fundraise earlier this year.
As Wefox didn’t raise equity, its valuation remains unchanged at $4.5 billion.
It brings the total amount of funding Wefox has raised so far this year to $160 million and marks a vote of confidence at a time when the insurtech industry faces a grim macroeconomic environment.
The funds will be used to help eight-year-old Wefox accelerate its global expansion plans and double down on mergers and acquisitions, according to the sources.

Unlike other insurtech platforms like Lemonade in the U.S. or Getsafe in Germany, which offer insurance directly to consumers without involving brokers, Wefox works with a network of brokers, both in-house and externally, who distribute its insurance products.
Wefox is also pushing into a new model of selling insurance called “affinity” distribution. This is where the company sells its insurance software to other businesses for a subscription fee — for example, an online car dealer adding car insurance at the point of sale.
Wefox is backed by some of the best-known names in venture capital, as well as large institutional names in the traditional financial world.
Its VC backers include Salesforce Ventures, Target Global, Seedcamp, Speedinvest, and Horizon Ventures, while UBS, Goldman Sachs, Mubadala Capital Ventures, Jupiter Asset Management are also existing investors.
Wefox is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence, which has become a hot area of tech recently following the rise of viral AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Wefox mainly uses AI to automate policy applications and customer service. The company has three tech hubs in Paris, Barcelona, and Milan dedicated to AI. More

IT TOOK A jury just four hours to deliberate on the seven, complicated charges of financial fraud facing Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. They had to parse what would make him guilty of defrauding his customers and his lenders; and of conspiring with others to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud and money-laundering. After 15 days of testimony they had clearly heard enough. They convicted him of each and every count. He faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in jail.Only a year has elapsed since ftx imploded. In its heyday the exchange was one of the world’s largest, with millions of customers and billions of dollars in customer funds. It was seen as the future of crypto—a high-tech offering from a brilliant wunderkind who wanted to play nice with regulators and usher in an era in which the industry went mainstream. But on November 2nd 2022 CoinDesk, a crypto news outlet, published a leaked balance-sheet. It showed that Alameda, ftx’s sister hedge fund also founded by Mr Bankman-Fried, held few assets apart from a handful of illiquid tokens he had invented. Spooked customers began to pull holdings from the exchange. Within days it had become an all-out run and ftx had stopped meeting withdrawal requests. Customers still had $8bn deposited on the exchange. After frantically trying to raise funds, Mr Bankman-Fried placed ftx into bankruptcy.Various accounts of what went wrong have emerged since. Many came from Mr Bankman-Fried himself, who spoke with dozens of journalists in the weeks following FTX’s collapse. Michael Lewis, an author who was “embedded” with Mr Bankman-Fried for weeks before and after it failed, has published a book about him. Snippets have come from people tracing the movement of tokens on blockchains. The government revealed its theory of the case in several indictments. But little compares with the reams of evidence that were divulged during the trial by former FTX insiders, some of whom were testifying in co-operation with the government, having pleaded guilty to fraud already.Some of the story remains the same regardless of the narrator. Mr Bankman-Fried was a gifted mathematician, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2014 before taking a job as a trader at Jane Street Capital, a prestigious quantitative hedge fund. In 2017 he spied an opportunity to set up a fund that would take advantage of arbitrage opportunities in illiquid and fragmented cryptocurrency markets, which were, per his telling, “a thousand times as large” than those in traditional markets. He enlisted an old friend, Gary Wang, a coder he had met at maths camp, to help set up the fund, which he named Alameda Research. He hired Nishad Singh, another coder and friend, as well as Caroline Ellison, a trader he had met at Jane Street.The tales begin to diverge from here. Ms Ellison, Mr Singh and Mr Wang all testified for the prosecution in the trial, speaking for hours about their version of the dizzying ascent and devastating collapse of Alameda and FTX.The way Ms Ellison described it, Mr Bankman-Fried was frustrated by how little capital Alameda had. He was “very ambitious”. In 2019 he described FTX to Ms Ellison as “a good source of capital” for Alameda. Mr Wang testified that he wrote code that allowed Alameda to have a negative balance on FTX—to withdraw more than the value of its assets—as early as 2019. Alameda was given a line of credit, which started small but ultimately increased to $65bn. Mr Wang also said that he overheard a conversation in which a trader asked Mr Bankman-Fried if Alameda could keep withdrawing money from the firm. Fine, as long as withdrawals were less than FTX’s trading revenues, came the reply. But less than a year after FTX was founded, when Mr Wang went to check its balance, Alameda had already withdrawn more than that.Customer deposits are supposed to be sacred, able to be withdrawn at any time. But even months in, Alameda already seemed to be borrowing that money for its own purposes. Mr Bankman-Fried said that he set up FTX because he thought he could create an excellent futures exchange, rather than to satisfy a desire for capital. He explained away Alameda’s privileges by saying he was only vaguely aware of them and had thought them necessary for FTX to function, especially in the early days when Alameda was by far the largest marketmaker on the exchange and there were sometimes bugs in the code that liquidated accounts. If Alameda was liquidated it would be catastrophic. Mr Bankman-Fried did not want this to happen, and he wanted the fund to be able to make markets.This might have been an excuse a jury could have swallowed, even though, by last year, Alameda was just one of perhaps 15 major marketmakers on the exchange and the others did not get such benefits. But two lines of argument undermined it. The first is how the privileges were used. The second is how Mr Bankman-Fried described FTX and its relationship with Alameda.Start with how Alameda used its privileges. Ms Ellison, whom Mr Bankman-Fried made co-chief executive of Alameda in 2021, when he stepped back to focus on his exchange, described the many times Alameda withdrew serious money from FTX. The first was when Mr Bankman-Fried wanted to buy a stake in FTX that Binance, a rival, owned. His relationship with the boss of Binance had soured and he was worried that regulators would not like its involvement. It was going to cost around $1bn to buy the stake, around the same amount of capital FTX was raising from investors. Ms Ellison said she told Mr Bankman-Fried “we don’t really have the money” and that Alameda would need to borrow from FTX to make the purchase. He told her to do it—“that’s okay, I think this is really important.”Borrowing to cover venture investments that were illiquid made the hole deeper. By late 2021 Mr Bankman-Fried nevertheless wanted to make another $3bn of investments. He asked Ms Ellison what would happen if the value of stocks, cryptocurrencies and venture investments collapsed and, in addition, FTX and Alameda struggled to secure more funds. She calculated that it would be “almost impossible” for Alameda to pay back what they had borrowed. Still, he told her to go ahead with the investment. By the next summer, Ms Ellison had been proved right.Mr Singh testified at length about “excessive” spending. Around $1bn went on marketing, including Super Bowl adverts and endorsements from the likes of Tom Brady, an American footballer—around the same as FTX’s revenue in 2021. By the end, Alameda had made some $5bn in “related party” loans to Mr Bankman-Fried, Mr Wang and Mr Singh to cover venture investments, property purchases and personal expenses. At one point, under cross examination, Danielle Sassoon, the prosecutor, asked Mr Bankman-Fried to confirm whether he had flown to the Super Bowl on a private jet. When he said he was unsure, she pulled up a picture of him reclining in the plush interior of a small plane. “It was a chartered plane, at least,” he shrugged.The prosecution often used Mr Bankman-Fried’s own words against him. Ms Sassoon would get Mr Bankman-Fried to say whether he agreed with a statement, such as whether he was walled off from trading decisions at Alameda. Mr Bankman-Fried would obfuscate, but eventually she would pin him down. “I was not generally making trading decisions, but I was not walled off from information from Alameda,” he admitted. Ms Sassoon then played a clip of him claiming he “was totally walled off from trading at Alameda”. Ms Sassoon did this over and over. Like an archer she would string her bow by asking a question, then release the arrow of evidence to prove a lie. At one point his lawyer slowed the pace of evidence by interrupting and asking if a document was being offered for its truth. “Your honour, it’s the defendant’s own statements,” the prosecutor said. “No, it’s not being offered for its truth.”Perhaps the most convincing moments of the trial were emotional ones. Ms Ellison was in tears as she told how, in the week of FTX’s collapse, “one of the feelings I had was an overwhelming feeling of relief.” Meanwhile, Mr Singh described a cinematic confrontation with Mr Bankman-Fried in September last year, when he realised how big “the hole” was. He described pacing the balcony of the penthouse (cost: $35m) where many FTX employees lived, expressing horror that some $13bn of customer money had been borrowed, much of which could not be paid back. In response, Mr Bankman-Fried, lounging on a deck chair, replied: “Right, that. We are a little short on deliverables.”As customers rushed to take their money in the week that FTX collapsed, employees resigned en masse. Adam Yedidia, one of Mr Bankman-Fried’s friends and employees, who has not been charged with any crimes and appears to have been in the dark, texted him: “I love you Sam, I am not going anywhere.” Days later, when he had learned the reality of what had gone on, he was gone. Many of those who were close to Mr Bankman-Fried and knew what was going on foresaw how this would end—those who did not were horrified when they found out. So was the jury. ■ More

Block reported a top- and bottom-line beat powered by strong revenue growth in Cash App and Square revenue.
The company saw $5.62 billion in revenue for the third quarter.

Jack Dorsey creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square arrives on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a crypto-currency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood on June 04, 2021 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Shares of fintech firm Block surged as much as 19% in after-hours trading Thursday, after the company reported third-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates on the top and bottom line and showed strong growth in both Cash App and Square revenue.
Here’s how the company did, compared to an analyst consensus from LSEG, formerly Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 55 cents, adjusted, vs. 47 cents expected
Revenue: $5.62 billion vs. $5.44 billion expected

Block also hiked its guidance.
The company had previously guided to $1.5 billion in full-year adjusted EBITDA but now expects adjusted EBITDA to come in between $1.66 billion and $1.68 billion.
Block is guiding to adjusted full-year operating income of $205 million to $225 million, a sharp increase from prior guidance of $25 million. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected full-year revenue guidance to come in at $21.54 billion. The company didn’t provide full-year revenue guidance but did guide to $875 million in adjusted operating income for 2024.
Additionally, Block now expects 2023 gross profit ranging from $7.44 billion to $7.46 billion.
“In 2024 we expect a significant improvement in Adjusted Operating Income margin on a year-over-year basis in 2024 compared to 2023. Our outlook does not assume any additional macroeconomic deterioration, which could impact our results,” the company said in its shareholder letter.

Third-quarter net revenue grew 24% to $5.62 billion from $4.52 billion in the year-earlier period, with bitcoin revenue jumping to $2.42 billion from $1.76 billion. Gross profit climbed 21% to $1.9 billion from $1.57 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at $477 million, compared to $327 million in the year-ago period. There was particularly strong growth in Block’s payment platform, Cash App, and its point-of-sale suite, Square. Cash App revenue soared $3.58 billion 34% year over year, while Square revenue grew 12% to $1.98 billion.
“We’ve been quiet lately because we’ve been focused,” Block co-founder Jack Dorsey said in a letter to shareholders. Block was the subject of a short seller report earlier this year that alleged its Cash App product facilitated fraud. “We want to thank all of you for your trust and continued belief in our work. We will work to balance that trust with accountability, some of which I hope this letter provides,” Dorsey’s letter concluded.
Dorsey said the company would focus on its go-to-market strategy, targeting local restaurants and services businesses to grow, and would refocus engineering talent using artificial intelligence technology.
On a conference call with analysts, Dorsey said he intends “to lead Square until we hit some milestones.”
“I want to see a significant return to growth, number one,” he said. “I want to see us be a lot more innovative and inventive and I want to see us connect our ecosystems better.”
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The need for second — and often third — incomes is mounting, according to a top digital bank executive.
Current CEO Stuart Sopp finds almost half of the firm’s payment customers have more than one job.

“If you’re having a paycheck over the past year, 20, 25% of paycheck depositors have at least one extra job. A further 20% incremental from there have two jobs,” Sopp told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Thursday. “They’re trying to make that money go further because of inflation.”
From DoorDash to Shopify to side businesses, Sopp finds the number is higher than prior years because money doesn’t go as far.
“Wage inflation is moderating quite substantially,” he said. “America has a sort of tail of two cities right now. Two groups: The wealthy and less affluent.”
Sopp launched Current, which provides mobile banking without monthly fees and offers secured credit cards, in 2015. It originally focused on helping medium to lower income customers. His company Current reports almost five million members.
He’s particularly concerned about less affluent consumers spiraling into debt to pay for basic necessities.

“They’re being forced into risks like risky credit cards,” noted Sopp, a former Morgan Stanley trader. “Unsecured credit cards… are not suitable for everyone.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found credit card debt topped $1 trillion for the first time ever in the second quarter.
“It’s going to be way bigger this year,” Sopp said.
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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said Thursday that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war poses a potential risk to the bank’s efforts to bring down inflation.
Bailey told CNBC that the now almost four-week conflict could have significant knock-on effects for energy markets, which could ultimately push prices higher again.
“It obviously is a risk going forward,” he told Joumanna Bercetche.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said Thursday that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war poses a potential risk to the bank’s efforts to bring down inflation.
Bailey told CNBC that aside from the immense human tragedy brought about by the now almost four-week conflict, the possible knock-on effects for energy markets were significant, risking a resurgence in price rises.

“So far, I would say, we haven’t seen a marked increase in energy prices, and that’s obviously good,” Bailey told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche.
“But it is a risk. It obviously is a risk going forward,” he said.
Oil prices have fluctuated over recent weeks as investors have eyed developments in the Middle East amid concerns that the fighting could spill over into a wider conflict in the energy-rich region.
The World Bank warned in a quarterly update Monday that crude oil prices could rise to more than $150 a barrel if the conflict escalates. As of Thursday 3:30 p.m. London time, Brent crude was trading up just over 1% at $85.65 a barrel.
Bailey said that, should energy prices push significantly higher, the central bank’s response would depend on the wider economic circumstances and how persistent policymakers expect the price rises to be.

The Bank of England has been steadfast in its efforts to bring down inflation, only ending its run of 14 consecutive interest rate hikes in September after data showed inflation running below expectations.
On Thursday, the bank held interest rates steady once again but said that monetary policy would need to remain tight for an “extended period of time.”
The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 in favor of keeping the main bank rate at 5.25%, with three members preferring another 25 basis point hike to 5.5%.
“We’re going to have to hold them [interest rates] in restrictive territory for some time,” Bailey said.
“The risks are still on the upside,” he continued. “It’s really just too soon to start talking about cutting interest rates.”
U.K. inflation came in at 6.7% in September, slightly ahead of expectations and unchanged from the previous month.
The bank now expects the consumer price index to average around 4.75% in the fourth quarter of 2023 before dropping to around 4.5% in the first quarter of next year and 3.75% in the second quarter of 2024. More