Thanks for joining me. The Treasury borrowed £6.6bn more than its annual target, official figures show, in a blow to Jeremy Hunt’s goal to get the deficit down.
Public sector borrowing, excluding banks, hit £11.9bn last month, meaning the Government borrowed £120.7bn during the financial year and missed its target set by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
5 things to start your day
1) Stagnant Britain is becoming like France, says World Bank chief economist | Bloated state hurting growth, says Indermit Gill, as tax burden heads for record high
2) ‘Iran is broke’: How clerics crippled the Islamic Republic | Decades of sanctions and corruption put a limit on Tehran’s war posturing
3) City advisers rake in £80m from Nationwide’s planned £2.9bn Virgin Money takeover | Revealed fees likely to reignite controversy over Nationwide deal
4) Mobile firms to miss deadline to fix rural ‘not-spots’ | Operators’ plea for an extension rejected as they struggle to build enough masts
5) Co-founder of private equity giant behind Six Nations to get up to £130m from listing | Dealmaker is selling up to 10 million shares in CVC when it is floated in Amsterdam
What happened overnight
Asian shares extended gains on Tuesday, taking cues from Wall Street as focus shifts to earnings results from US tech giants in the week, while a still strong dollar pressured the Japanese yen to fresh 34-year lows.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.5pc, helped by a 1pc jump in Taiwanese shares and a 0.8pc advance in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index.
The Asian index rose 1pc the day before on easing fears of a major escalation in the Middle East conflict, recovering some of the 3.7pc losses last week. Japan’s Nikkei edged up 0.1pc.
Investors scaled back safe-haven bets on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 253.58 points or 0.67pc to 38,239.98. The S&P 500 gained 43.37 points or 0.87pc to 5,010.60. The Nasdaq Composite gained 169.30 points or 1.11pc to 15,451.31.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury fell 0.2 basis points to 4.61pc, from 4.615pc late on Friday.
The 30-year bond yield rose 0.6 basis points to 4.7168pc from 4.711pc late on Friday.
