Cost pressures on UK businesses have climbed to their steepest point in three years, driven by higher outlays on energy, fuel, and raw materials. BDO's inflation tracker climbed to 103.65 for September, edging up from the 102.18 recorded a month earlier and reaching a level not seen since June 2023.

BDO's latest assessment points to a combination of higher input costs and softening consumer appetite placing fresh strain on businesses as the Autumn Budget draws closer. Contraction in both manufacturing and services activity pushed overall UK output lower over the previous month, the report noted, with weakening domestic demand identified as a contributing factor.

BDO's head of growth, Scott Knight, conveyed that companies are approaching this Budget with a single, consistent expectation: an absence of surprises. Hiring appetite remains limited, expansion appears to be levelling off, and businesses are finding their margins under strain from elevated operating expenses. What businesses want, Knight indicated, is not sweeping intervention, but rather a predictable operating environment they can plan around.

Brent crude had shed roughly 2% earlier in the trading session, pulled lower after Ukraine and Russia announced a mutual halt to strikes on each other's energy infrastructure — a development that followed a US fuel-supply arrangement with Moscow disclosed over the prior weekend — while market sentiment remained weighted toward downside risks rather than any anticipated improvement. Priced at $104.46 per barrel, Brent crude edged lower by around a quarter of a percent.

According to Kyle Rodda, a senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, a disputed US arrangement with Russia — one permitting greater diesel exports — offered some modest relief to supply conditions in that fuel market.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has put the funding shortfall facing Chancellor John Healey at as much as £35bn, attributing the pressure to inflation eating into the real-terms value of departmental cash budgets while simultaneously pushing up the cost of government borrowing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has also put the Treasury on notice that the forthcoming budget risks a credibility gap unless the government maps out how it intends to handle rising spending demands — defence funding among them.

Healey is set to attend the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Bangkok, with a stated aim of advancing multilateral cooperation among member nations. Healey acknowledged that armed conflicts in the Middle East and Europe were placing pressure on household finances across many countries, with fuel and mortgage costs both rising as a result, though he expressed confidence that Britain and its partners were positioned to address those pressures collectively.

The minister outlined plans to engage with global partners on maintaining trade flows, easing pressures on households and businesses, and building a more durable British economy capable of spreading prosperity across all regions. The proposed spending plan, its architects say, would extend that trajectory by pairing controlled public finances with efforts to strengthen the economy against external pressures.

The Fight Inequality Alliance has urged finance ministers gathered at the IMF/World Bank summit in Bangkok to put debt relief measures for lower-income nations on the table. FIA General Secretary Jenny Ricks argued that the IMF and World Bank, as institutions rooted in an earlier era, continue to shape global economic rules in ways that affect countries beyond their membership.

Debt-repayment obligations built into such programmes can redirect public resources away from healthcare infrastructure and education budgets, with each payment to external lenders drawing down funds that might otherwise support schools, clinics, or household food security.

Outside the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, where the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was due to be announced, one demonstrator called for the cancellation of outstanding debts, higher taxation of the wealthiest, and an end to policies that impose financial strain on people with lower incomes.

Polymarket betting odds place MIT economics professor David Autor at the front of the field, with a 30% probability attached to his name. A 19% stake is attributed to Ariél Pakes, who occupies the Thomas professorship in economics at Harvard University. A 12% stake is attributed to Susan Athey, who holds a faculty position focused on the economics of technology at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Woodford — whose academic work spans macroeconomics and monetary theory — commands a 10% stake.