U.K. disposable incomes are set for their biggest drop in a decade next year as rising inflation, tax hikes and tighter monetary and fiscal policy put the squeeze on consumers, according to Credit Suisse, Bloomberg News reported. The bank predicts a 1.5% drop in real disposable incomes in 2022, the biggest fall since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2011. That will in turn damage the prospects for economic growth, analysts including Sonali Punhani wrote in a note. The forecast is the latest sign of concerns around a looming crunch in the U.K.

A collapse in cryptocurrencies is a "plausible scenario" and rules are needed to regulate the fast-growing sector as a "matter of urgency", Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Risks to financial stability from the application of crypto technologies are currently limited, but there are a number of "very good reasons" to think that this might not be the case for very much longer, Cunliffe said. "Regulators internationally and in many jurisdictions have begun the work.

British companies pushed the number of workers on payrolls above pre-coronavirus levels last month, an indication of strength in the labor market that may embolden the Bank of England to raise interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Payrolls climbed by a record 207,000 last month, according to data from the U.K. tax authority. Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics showed job vacancies rose to 1.2 million, also an all-time high.

European travel is reviving and easyJet is increasing flights between now and December, the British airline said on Tuesday, after running up an annual loss of over 1 billion pounds during the pandemic, Reuters reported. For the autumn period, easyJet said that it would fly 70% of its pre-pandemic capacity, a jump from the 60% it had been aiming for only a month earlier, as demand for holidays surged, particularly in the UK where travel rules have been loosened.

British consumer morale has fallen to its lowest since February, when the country was under heavy COVID-19 restrictions, due to worries about the economic outlook and about rising prices, a Bank of America report showed on Friday, Reuters reported. The survey chimed with other gauges of consumer confidence in Britain that have suggested a growing cost-of-living squeeze has started to drag on the economy's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Surveying the rows of purple cabbage that stretch across one of her fields, Katharine Nundy says the outlook for her farm is gloomy. Like other farmers across the U.K., she used to rely on an influx of seasonal workers from the European Union to bring in the harvest, and is struggling without it this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. left the 27-member bloc last year and brought an end this year to the free movement of EU citizens into the country in the midst of a pandemic that has created labor shortages in many major economies.

Credit Suisse Group AG said that it will front “as much as possible” of the legal and advisory costs to recover cash for investors in supply-chain finance funds it ran with the now-defunct Greensill Capital, Bloomberg News reported. The majority of expenses incurred in recovering the money has not been passed onto investors, Credit Suisse said in a statement published on Wednesday. It estimates it will spend around $145 million for the process in 2021.

Britain's government bond market is showing signs of strain from the country's energy crisis, with headlines about gas prices sparking heavy selling this week - a new development that points to growing unease over inflation expectations, Reuters reported. There was disarray in Britain in recent days as a deficit of truckers left fuel pumps dry across the land and a spike in European wholesale natural gas prices tipped energy companies into bankruptcy.

Britain's competition regulator has scrapped its action against Ryanair and British Airways over their failure to offer refunds to passengers prevented from flying by COVID-19 restrictions, saying the legal position was unclear, Reuters reported. During pandemic lockdowns, instead of offering refunds to those legally unable to fly, IAG-owned British Airways offered vouchers or rebooking and Ryanair providing the option to rebook.

The United Kingdom's 25-year-old model of importing cheap labour has been up-ended by Brexit and COVID-19, sowing the seeds for a 1970s-style winter of discontent complete with worker shortages, spiralling wage demands and price rises, Reuters reported. Leaving the European Union, followed by the chaos of the biggest public health crisis in a century, has plunged the world's fifth-largest economy into a sudden attempt to kick its addiction to cheap imported labour.