Mystery to me.
The surprise fall in output at financial and business services firms in the City of London and beyond has wrongfooted a raft of economists who had been expecting the most powerful part of the UK economy to have expanded sufficiently in the first three months of the year to stave off a return to recession.
Not only did business and financial services output fall by 0.1%, but, within that performance, the vast financial services subsector – including banks, building societies and insurance firms – "made the largest negative contribution", according to preliminary estimates from the Office for National Statistics.
