Matthew Lynn

Hundreds of billions have been wiped off the value of the crypto currencies. A prominent Ukrainian blogger and influencer on digital coins has been found dead. And traders are bracing themselves for a rocky start to trading on Monday as markets start to tumble. We will have to see whether it develops into a full-blown crash or not. And yet, all the major equity indices were already wildly overvalued, and a correction was always inevitable – it was just a question of when it would start.  There may well be a rough few days ahead for investors. An estimated $400 billion was wiped off the value of the main crypto currencies on Friday evening, while the Nasdaq dropped by more than 800 points, or 3.

It has already cancelled investments in Liverpool and Cambridge, while muttering darkly about moving its listing to New York and its headquarters to the United States. Now AstraZeneca, the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, is threatening to stop investing in Britain completely if the country does not spend more on medicine. There may be an element of arm-twisting in that, and the NHS is so stretched for cash it can’t easily spend much more on drugs. And yet, the UK also can’t afford to lose a company as significant as AZ. And if that means the NHS spending more on pills, and less on salaries, that is a choice worth making.  If that means the NHS spending more on pills, and less on salaries, that is a choice worth making.

Flutter, the gambling giant that owns Paddy Power, has already London, and the British chip designer ARM decided to float in New York. There have been reports that AstraZeneca may move its listing too. Now we learn that even Goldman Sachs may be giving up on the City, as it delists Petershill, the majority-owned investment vehicle it launched almost 20 years ago, from the London Stock Exchange. The City is facing extinction, but there is still no sign that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves will do anything to rescue it. It is a slow-moving car crash Petershill was launched in 2007, and listed on the stock market in 2021, to offer retail inventors a slice of private equity and hedge funds.

At the OECD, the IMF, and at Davos, there will probably be a few wry smiles, and a sense of Schadenfreude. Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding libertarian President of Argentina who promised to destroy the economic establishment by cutting taxes and dramatically reducing the size of the state, is now facing a financial crisis of his own. The United States is offering to step in with a bailout, but why? Milei should sink or swim in the markets he champions. A rescue package from the Trump administration will prove a mistake.  It is turning into the toughest week yet for the Milei experiment. After setbacks in local elections, the currency markets have lost faith, the peso has plunged, and that will make it very hard to finance the country’s huge debts.

You probably won’t see Kate Moss gossiping with a Spice Girl or two by the changing rooms, but for anyone nostalgic for the 1990s, there will be at least one treat to look forward to. Topshop is back. There is just one catch. Sure, it might be able to carve out a niche for itself. But in the face of a blizzard of tax rises, it can’t save the high street.  It is not exactly a return to the glory days, when its stores dominated every high street and suburban mall, but from this weekend you will be able to buy Topshop- and Topman-labelled clothes from a concession at the West End department store Liberty. A full-scale return to bricks-and-mortar stores is being hinted at by the chain, now owned by the online retailer Asos, and the Danish retailer Heartland. It is not completely alone.

President Trump's 50 per cent tariffs on India kicked in yesterday. The timing could not be worse: in May, India overtook Britain, Germany and Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world. According to a report by EY only this week, it was already set to become the second largest globally by 2038, behind only China. After a decade of liberalisation and rapid industrialisation, it has witnessed exceptionally strong growth. And now, it looks like Donald Trump may kill off the Indian economic miracle. Over the last twenty years, India’s growth has averaged 6.9 per cent, a rate that puts almost every other country in the world firmly in second place.

We already have Great British Energy, and of course Great British Rail. It now looks as very soon we will also have Great British Steel. The government has today stepped in to rescue another failing metal producer, Speciality Steels in South Yorkshire. It is, in effect, creating a new state-owned steel conglomerate. There is just one catch. It is the government’s incompetently designed net-zero targets that are responsible for bankrupting the industry – and all that nationalising will achieve is making taxpayers responsible for endless losses. The government is, in effect, bankrupting the companies and then stepping in to rescue them Britain’s third largest steel works, Speciality Steelworks, today collapsed into administration.