Blog

In his first conference speech as Labour party leader and Prime Minister, we got several important policy updates from Andy Burnham. From April 2030 the government will finally “rip the plaster off” and amend the pensions triple lock to not necessarily keep pace with workers’ earnings. Electoral reform is back on the agenda, and a new in-out EU referendum could be included in the next Labour election manifesto. Prior to the conference, the reboot of Help to Buy to become the Your First Home Scheme sent housebuilding stocks up on Monday.

The latest US-China summit went as expected with pageantry being prioritised over policies. The trade truce between the two nations was extended by two months and they agreed to establish a “communication channel” to report AI incidents before their next meeting in November.

While all the major AI moguls dined in the White House, markets reacted positively to the lack of guardrails around AI development despite a batch of new stories containing more examples of agents going off script and hacking government institutions, like the Australian healthcare database. The leading US tech index is now up 2.45% since former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s tweets on the existential threat from superintelligent AI went viral three weeks ago.

Taiwan, the soon-to-be-expiring trade truce and the global energy crisis might have to take a backseat to AI when Trump and Xi meet this week in Washington.

After a week of nonstop press coverage that has seen the existential threat from superintelligent AI enter the mainstream discourse, investors will be watching out for any agreements that allow for a mutual ‘slowdown’. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a new AI safety notification mechanism has been proposed for the two leaders to consider during the summit. While it looks unlikely either Trump or Xi will be willing to put further guardrails in place, according to leaks this weekend, some senior officials in the Trump administration are frustrated about his refusal to take the subject seriously and will try to convince Trump to push for more oversight and international agreements with China…

Global stocks broadly rose in August on the back of stronger corporate earnings across regions. Notably, technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) related stocks rallied after experiencing a sharp sell-off in July. Surging cloud revenues helped Microsoft and Amazon report better-than-expected growth, and chip giant Nivida posted record- breaking quarterly revenues of $96bn, more than double what they generated in the same period last year.

The tech sector experienced some meaningful swings as investors grapple over whether the large capital expenditure that has been poured into these businesses will ultimately pay off in terms of the revenue it is expected to generate…

This is the last blog in my tips series on outsourcing, based on our latest research with the lang cat, CIPs in 2026: Tuning the Engine for Growth.

The first two blogs covered formal governance and holding providers to account to get the best out of an outsourced CIP. This final article looks at why firms should consider the future direction of their CIP, and how their operations may need to adapt as their business, and the market around it, changes.

Markets across the globe fell as the price of crude oil rose above the $100 mark for the first time since May. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia had to suspend operations through its East-West pipeline after a Houthi drone strike. Saudi oil traders have said they will run out of oil exports if the pipeline doesn’t reopen within days, hampering around 4% of the global oil supply. Yesterday, the Houthis also captured the island of Perim expanding their control of the Bab al-Mandab strait.

Supply pressures forced US retailer Costco to start limiting how much motor oil consumers can buy to 40 gallons per week…