Estate of Mike Lynch ordered to pay £920m to Hewlett-Packard

The estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for HP’s acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy, after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 on a trip with friends and family celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011

Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened

Britain’s economy could be dragged into recession by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes, economists at Morgan Stanley have warned.Following this morning’s data showing a slowdown in private sector growth this month and a surge in input costs (see 9.41am), Morgan Stanley economist Bruna Skarica has warned that the energy price shock is likely to prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates, which would hurt growth.Skarica points out that oil prices have risen by around 40% since January, with natural gas contracts up by around 80%, prompted the financial markets to predict the BoE will raise rates this year.Skarica told clients:double quotation markShould these financial conditions and commodity prices be sustained in the coming months, we would be calling for a pronounced UK recession at the turn of the year

What levers could Rachel Reeves pull to help with rising prices?

Rachel Reeves updated MPs on Tuesday about the steps the government was taking to cushion the impact of the Iran war on consumers and the UK economy. The chancellor stopped short of announcing specific immediate support but said she was contingency planning for the tough months ahead.Here are some of the levers she could pull:Speculation has been rife since the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz sent oil and gas prices soaring, that the government may be forced to step in to protect households from a jump in utility bills.But Reeves gave the clearest indication yet that she has no intention of repeating the across-the-board subsidies introduced by Liz Truss in autumn 2022, which went on to cost the Treasury about £40bn, and were worth £1,350 to households in the top 10% of earners.Reeves said Truss’s approach had “left us with high levels of national debt, a cheque written then for a bill that is still being paid today”

Seven charts that reveal how unprepared Australia was for the fuel crisis

It’s been a bewildering few weeks since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran triggered a global energy shock that shows little sign of ending.Here are seven charts that tell the story so far.At the turn of this century, Australia produced 563,000 barrels of oil a day, with eight refineries supplying 98% of our total petroleum product needs.From that high point, oil and petroleum production has slumped to the point where the country relies on imports for 90% of its liquid fuel needs and oil production is at its lowest since the late 1960s.Over the past 25 years, the number of local refineries has also dropped:Mobil’s Port Stanvac refinery in South Australia was mothballed in 2003 (and permanently closed in 2009)

UK manufacturers hit by sharpest rise in cost inflation since Black Wednesday in 1992

The UK’s manufacturers have suffered the sharpest one-month acceleration in costs since the aftermath of Black Wednesday in 1992 as conflict in the Middle East has driven up oil prices, new survey evidence shows.The closely watched purchasing managers’ index (PMI) lays bare the impact of the conflict on the UK economy, with growth slowing sharply across manufacturing and services and costs rising.Chris Williamson, the chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, which collects the data, said: “Output growth across manufacturing and services has slowed to a crawl as companies blamed lost business directly on the events in the Middle East, whether through heightened risk aversion among customers, surging price pressures, higher interest rates, or via travel and supply chain disruptions.“Inflationary pressures have surged higher on the back of rising energy prices and fractured supply chains.”Responding to the survey, Morgan Stanley warned the economy could potentially be dragged into “a pronounced UK recession” by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes

Revolut warns it risks backlash over support for energy-intensive AI and crypto

The UK banking app Revolut has said it could face a backlash over its support for energy-intensive sectors such as crypto and AI, as it posted a 57% increase in profits for last year.The fintech, which can now launch as a fully fledged UK bank after a five-year wait for regulatory approval, warned in its 2025 annual report that such activities posed a “reputational risk”. Revolut offers crypto trading.Cryptocurrency mining, particularly for bitcoin, and AI datacentres demand large amounts of power, with competition for electricity supplies only getting steeper since the US-Israel war on Iran sent energy prices soaring over the past month.The company also reported a £1