Five signs that the global economic recovery may be an illusion

An oil field over the Monterey shale formation in California: is fracking really the solution to the world’s energy needs? Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

The global economy seemed to be on the mend when the International Monetary Fund met for its spring meeting in Washington 10 years ago.Alan Greenspan had cut official interest rates in the US to 1% after the collapse of the dotcom boom and the world's biggest economy had responded to the treatment. Gordon Brown was chancellor of the exchequer and the UK was in its 12th year of uninterrupted growth.

Companies in the west were flocking to China now that it was part of theWorld Trade Organisation. The talk was of offshoring, just-in-time global supply chains and integrated capital markets. The expectation was that the good times would last for ever. No serious thought was given to the notion that total system failure was just around the corner. Faith in the self-correcting properties of open markets was absolute.

When the crash duly came, a self-flagellating IMF confessed that it had been guilty of groupthink. It had either ignored the signs of trouble or played down their significance when it did spot them. The fund has learned some hard lessons from this experience. Downside risks to the forecasts in its half-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO) are now exhaustively catalogued.

The world of 2014 is not dissimilar to that of 2004. The boost provided by cheap money has got the global economy moving. Inflation as measured by the cost of goods and services is low but asset prices are starting to hum. Financial markets have got their mojo back. Deals are being done, big bonuses paid. The received wisdom is that the worst is over and that the prospects for the global economy will strengthen as the remaining problems are ironed out.

Some analysts believe that the Great Moderation – the period of low inflation and continual expansion – has returned after the hiatus caused by the crash.

The optimists could be right. Recessions tend to be the exception rather than the norm and countries eventually revert to a trend rate of growth. In the UK it is 2% or so; in the US it is a bit higher; in the eurozone a bit lower. This could be the start of a long global upswing built on technological change and the advent of middle-class spending power in fast-growing emerging market economies.

Or it could be another case of groupthink.

Imagine, therefore, that in five years' time the IMF is doing its postmortem on another period of global turbulence. What will it say were the warning signs missed during 2014? Here are five to be going on with.

The first will doubtless feature in the WEO due to be published on Tuesday: the global economy's dependency on exceptionally low interest rates. Since peaking in the 1970s, the trough in interest rates has been lower in each subsequent cycle and they are now barely above zero. Countries such as Britain and the US have only been able to revert to their trend rate of growth through periods of looser and looser monetary policy. As Adair Turner noted in his lecture to the Cass Business School in February, this has averted the threat of secular stagnation – but at a price. The recovery engineered by Greenspan was a case of "the hair of the dog", and the same applies in spades to the one since the Great Recession of 2008-09.

The second threat is a bond market crash as the world's central banks try to return monetary policy to a more normal setting. Central banks are adopting a cautious approach to this process, with the Federal Reserve gradually reducing the amount of bonds it buys under the quantitative easing programme and the Bank of England using forward guidance to reassure borrowers that any increase in official interest rates will be modest and gradual.

It is assumed that central banks can pull off the normalisation of monetary policy relatively painlessly. But that was the received wisdom a decade ago when Greenspan finally started to edge up borrowing costs. The Fed had failed to spot the colossal bubble building up in the housing market and the vulnerability of sub-prime borrowers to the falling real estate prices caused by tighter policy.

The reason bond markets need to be watched is simple. By buying large numbers of bonds, central banks have increased their price. The yield (interest rate) on a bond moves inversely to its price, so as bond prices go up the yield goes down. When the time comes to sell the bonds back to the market, the opposite should happen. The greater supply of bonds will depress bond prices and raise their yield. If there were to be a rush to the exit, the increase in bond yields would be swift and painful.

In some respects, crashing bond markets are a too-obvious threat. A real black-swan event contains the element of surprise, so it is worth looking around to see if there is a bubble out there that everybody is missing, something so obvious it is staring us in the face. How about fracking? The assumption is that the solution to the world's energy needs lies in shale oil and gas, which is why investment has been piling into the sector. Yet the Oil & Gas Journal reported last month that 15 major companies have written off $35bn in investment since the boom began. Getting oil and gas out of the ground is proving costlier and less profitable than expected. So the third threat is that fracking proves to be the new sub-prime.

Finally, there are two slow-burn problems that the world ignores at its peril. In an interview with the Guardian last week, Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, warned of the risk of resource conflicts within the next five to 10 years unless the international community gets serious about dealing with global warming. The catalogue of extreme weather events – from floods in the UK to droughts in Australia – is growing. The inaction of policymakers on climate change is the same as Greenspan's on asset-price bubbles: deal with the problem if it arises. We all know how that ended.

Kim also says that action needs to be taken against rising inequality. So does the IMF's managing director, Christine Lagarde. For the first three decades after the second world war, the global economy was by and large the story of a rising tide lifting all boats. That is no longer the case, with a tiny elite now grabbing the lion's share of global growth. At the bottom, and increasingly for those in the middle as well, it is a case of wage squeezes, high unemployment, debt, austerity and poverty. The 85 richest people on the planet own the same wealth as half the world's population but seem oblivious to the risk of widespread social unrest. So, of course, were the Bourbons and the Romanovs.

Marks & Spencer: chic in Paris, but losing ground at home

Marks and Spencer: 'exotique' in Paris. Photograph: Imagewise Ltd/Rex Features

Everyone looks their best when they are on holiday – even Marks & Spencer, which escorted investors and the press corps around "gay Paree" last week. Boss Marc Bolland was able to trumpet the success of "Le M&S" in a city where its crumpets and digestive biscuits are "exotique" and its casualwear brand Indigo captures the "spirit of bohème chic".

Unfortunately, back in Blighty it's the same old story for the venerable high-street institution, which is expected to report its 11th consecutive quarter of falling clothing sales on Thursday. Recent figures from Kantar Worldpanel showed the retailer losing market share faster than any of its rivals among the UK's top 10 clothing retailers, with its share of the market slipping to 11.18% in the six months to 16 February from 11.36% a year ago.

To that end, analysts have pencilled in a 1% fall in clothing and homeware sales, while food sales are expected to be flat. The muted performance means that the dapper Dutchman is unlikely to hit even the lowered sales target of £10.8bn he set for the UK chain two years ago, with the City estimating annual sales for the year to March 2014 will come in at around £10.3bn. As they say in France: "bof".

… and now Amazon is stealing a march on it

Britain is Amazon's third-largest international market after Germany and Japan, and we are about to find out just how big a cheque British shoppers wrote to boss Jeff Bezos in 2013. The indications are that it was a whopper; Amazon is almost certain to have overtaken Marks & Spencer in the non-food retail stakes.

Amazon breaks out numbers for its biggest foreign markets once a year, in its annual report. It is due to be published this month, and could come as early as this week.

It has taken many years, but a company with no presence on the high street now has a bigger following than Middle England's favourite chain store. If one excludes food sales, M&S took £4.1bn in 2013. Its performance in 2012 was almost exactly on a par with Amazon, with both taking £4.2bn.

The final piece of the jigsaw, for those interested in what the US group gives back in tax, will come later in the year, most likely in May, when Amazon releases its UK accounts. Accounts filed for the last five years show that Amazon has paid just £4.5m in UK taxes since 2008, £3m of that in 2012. Last year M&S paid £101m to the exchequer.

Tricky questions add up at the Co-op

The Co-operative Bank's number crunchers are hunched over their calculators this weekend, totting up the full-year financial results. Publication was delayed until this week after it became clear that the bank would have to raise an extra £400m to pay for a catalogue of customer ripoffs, including mis-selling loan insurance and overcharging on mortgages. Investors have already been warned to expect a pre-tax loss north of £1bn.

We may also learn whether the controversial bonuses offered to Co-op group chief executive Euan Sutherland and his top team have been awarded to those running the bank. Worth 100% of his £1.5m salary, Sutherland's inducement was generous even by City standards. It was billed as a "retention bonus", but succeeded only in causing his departure after protests from mutual-movement activists.

Niall Booker joined the bank last summer from HSBC just in time to help negotiate the £1.5bn bail-in that saw the parent group cut its stake to 30%, selling the rest to hedge funds and others. Booker has said publicly that "we need to be willing to pay people to take career risk", but has so far declined to answer questions on his own package. He may be more co-operative on the day of the results.

Wealthy stranded in digital dark age as expensive properties lack fast internet

One Hyde Park apartments in London cost an average of £22m, but it seems this isn't enough to buy superfast internet connection. Photograph: Alamy

They have panoramic views, iris recognition in the lifts, and a 24-hour concierge who will stock the fridge with champagne or charter a private jet. But as the rest of the nation upgrades to fibre-optic broadband,London's most expensive apartments have been left in the digital dark ages, stranded at the end of often painfully slow copper lines.

Only the most wealthy can afford a pied-à-terre at the One Hyde Park development opposite Harrods, in Knightsbridge, but it seems even the average £22m price tag is not enough to buy a superfast internetconnection. The flats went on sale just three years ago, but their broadband speed is well below the national average.

The problem is not confined to Knightsbridge. BT is spending £2.5bn wiring up 19m homes with faster internet, with the government bent on ensuring broadband reaches rural locations, but as the country's most far-reaching infrastructure project nears completion, it has emerged that many of the most exclusive addresses in London and other big cities are being overlooked.

Across the capital, and particularly along the banks of the Thames, where luxury steel and glass high-rises now jostle for space, mining tycoons, investment bankers, rock stars and footballers spend many precious minutes in front of buffering screens when trying to make a Skype call or watch films over the internet.

One Hyde Park has a top speed of around 10 megabits per second – well below the 18Mbps national average. The building's developer, Candy & Candy, says it is now negotiating with BT to install a 100Mbps service.

Multi-unit dwellings, be they council tower blocks or high-end developments, often have a dedicated line running from the ground floor to the nearest telephone exchange. These lines are made of copper, and can run long distances, slowing the speed at which information travels.

BT's upgrade project is replacing copper wiring between the exchange and the green cabinets found on most streets. But it cannot help properties such as Pan Peninsula, the Canary Wharf tower that claims to hold London's highest private apartments, or Arlington Street, the Candy brothers' development around the corner from Piccadilly, because they are not connected to a cabinet.

"Internet today is a bit like having water or electricity," said hedge fund manager Radenko Milakovic. His London base is just down the road from near One Hyde Park at a development called The Knightsbridge, where the largest properties sell for £14m, but until recently the top broadband speed was 8Mbps.

"One should have access to the best infrastructure, particularly if you are in central London, whether you are in Brick Lane or Knightsbridge. Fast, uninterrupted and reliable internet should be available to everyone."

Milakovic has a back-up server in Bulgaria, which constantly updates the data he gathers in London. On the BT line, the process of copying each new file would have to take place overnight to avoid jamming the service during the daytime. Downloading films was just too slow to contemplate.

The problem has left a gap in the market and Hyperoptic, the niche operator that last year raised £50m from financier George Soros to fund its expansion, has begun wiring up buildings across town. Such is the appetite for the internet that Hyperoptic has now signed up 150 London buildings, housing 35,000 flats, and is expanding to other big cities in the UK.

It targets larger buildings, from affordable housing in the former Olympic Village to posher places such as The Knightsbridge, where Milakovic can now download large files in seconds and back up his server throughout the day.

BT's top speed for retail, as opposed to business customers, is up to 300Mbps, while Hyperoptic can run up to 1 gigabit (equal to about 1000 megabits) per second. Both are more than the average family needs, but they allow media to flow into the home at an unprecedented rate.

Thinkbroadband editor Andrew Ferguson said: "Developers are starting to see a broadband impact on rental and resale prices. It's not just about having a Jacuzzi."

Harvey Wolfinger's business, Invernetwork, counsels advertisers on how to spend their money with Google. He lives at the Norman Foster-designed Albion Riverside in Battersea and before Hyperoptic wired his building 18 months ago, the typical speed was a paltry 1.5Mbps.

"We complained endlessly to BT, but they said we were too far from the exchange," he said. Downloading advertising videos could take 20 minutes, while watching BBC catch-up programmes on the Sky Plus box was simply not possible. At Wolfinger's home in Scotland, where the internet came courtesy of a satellite service, the connection was many times faster at 20Mbps.

"In real terms we were better off in the Highlands of Scotland, in the remote munros, than we were in London."

The solution for larger buildings is to replace the copper with a fibre line from the exchange to the premises – or FTTP – but BT is in no rush to do this. It has installed FTTP in some places, for example Chelsea Bridge Wharf in London and the Big Peg and King Edward's Wharf in Birmingham. But its real focus is on upgrading cabinets – FTTC – a system which arguably delivers more bang per buck.

A BT spokeswoman said: "The presence of exchange-only lines can limit our options for delivering fibre but we work hard to deliver a fibre-based solution to such premises where we can. The vast majority of our rollout is FTTC. The technology enables us to deliver high-speed fibre broadband to the widest possible footprint much more rapidly and cost-effectively than would otherwise be possible using FTTP."

British businesses let down by 'failing' export schemes, says Labour

Shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, accused the government of failing to deliver its pledge of an export-led recovery. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

Two flagship schemes set up by the government to encourage firms to export have failed to help a single firm.

Labour accused the coalition of "badly letting down business" as it emerged that neither of the schemes, designed to provide £6.5bn to support trade, were taking effect.

In answers to parliamentary questions tabled by shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, ministers admitted that the £5bn export refinancing scheme, launched in July 2012 and intended to be running by the end of that year, is not yet operational.

Meanwhile, a £1.5bn direct lending scheme launched in autumn 2013 has received only 15 inquiries, with just one firm putting in an application for support under a scheme first announced in the previous year's autumn statement.

A previous similar programme, the Export Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme, was abandoned after only five firms received assistance.

Labour said the news was an embarrassment for ministers, as UK Trade and Investment's (UKTI) annual Export Week begins, after the latest ONS trade statistics showed Britain's trade deficit worsening and exports falling.

Umunna said: "Ministers promised an export-led recovery, but the truth is that they are badly letting down British business. Scheme after scheme which were supposed to help more firms export have failed to have any impact whatsoever, and now we learn that two programmes which were announced to great fanfare two years ago haven't helped a single firm.

"We desperately need to get more businesses exporting to boost middle-income jobs, grow our way out of the cost-of-living crisis and so we can ensure Britain can compete. As we've seen with so many of the Tory-led government's promises, they have completely failed to deliver."

UKTI's Export Week is expected to see thousands of firms attend events to provide advice on boosting overseas trade.

BP faces shareholder pressure over Russian stake amid Crimea standoff

BP chief executive Bob Dudley (left) with Vladimir Putin. The oil firm has already been drawn into the row over Crimea's annexation by Russia. Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images

BP is expected to come under pressure at its annual meeting this week to explain how its decision to take a 20% stake in Russia's biggest oilcompany, Rosneft, will be affected by the country's standoff with the west over Crimea.

BP's annual meeting, held at the ExCel centre in London's docklands on Thursday, could see questions from shareholders about Rosneft, continuing legal threats in the US and executive pay and environmental issues.

The British oil group has already been drawn into the row over Russia's annexation of Crimea with calls for Rosneft's delisting from the London Stock Exchange.

There is a risk that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, could expropriate assets from western companies, including BP, said independent analyst Louise Cooper. BP's Rosneft stake accounts for a third of its production volume and gives it a stake in Arctic exploration.

In addition, BP still operates under the cloud of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It has already paid out billions in compensation to victims but could face further penalties of up to $20bn (£12bn), on top of the existing $40bn bill, if it is found guilty of gross negligence by the US department of justice.

HSBC oil analysts Gordon Gray and Peter Hitchens wrote of the 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico : "In the case of gross negligence 1) BP's balance sheet looks strong enough to weather it in our estimates, and 2) we would expect a multi-year appeal process to mean the near-term financial impact would be limited."

They also thought BP's strategy presentation in early March "did a good job of shifting the strategic emphasis from the post-Macondo [Gulf of Mexico] recovery to its longer-term growth potential".

BP can point to a recent deal with US environmental protection authorities that will enable the oil company to bid for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP's boss, Bob Dudley, could face questions over his pay, which tripled last year, despite the legal threats still hanging over the company. The American, who took the helm at BP towards the end of 2010 after Tony Hayward left, received $8.7m (£5.2m) in salary, bonus and share awardslast year, up sharply from $2.6m in 2012.

BP's share price, around 488p, is still far below its 650p before the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Julia Kollewe

Hailo app proves a virtuous circle for London's black-taxi drivers

Gary Jackson, left, and Ron Zeghibe, co-founders of Hailo. The taxi app has now spread to 13 cities around the world. Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty

To anyone passing, the meeting of six men might have seemed incongruous amid the normal hustle and bustle of a busy central Londoncafe, with customers tucking into full-English breakfasts and mugs of builders tea.

It was in Double J's Cafe on Charlotte Street in November 2010 that three taxi drivers, trying improve the lot of the average cabbie, first met with three entrepreneurs who were eager to bring mobile technology to black taxis. The modest beginning, which stretched over three hours, cemented the idea for Hailo, the taxi app that has spread to more than a dozen cities across three continents and raised more than $90m (£55m) in three years.

The app appears simple – a tap on the trademark yellow button hails a nearby taxi and journeys can be paid for using credit-card information that has already been uploaded to the system. More complicated was getting together a network that worked for drivers and passengers. Hailo was the eighth app of its type to launch in London, according to Ron Zeghibe, the company's chairman and one of the three founder entrepreneurs.

"We could have the best 21st-century technical solution in the world but, unlike a lot of tech startups, this is grafting technology on to a 400-year-old industry. If you think for a minute that you can walk in and slap this technology [on] and get [drivers] all to say 'wonderful, you saved our lives', you are smoking dope," he said. "You really do need to understand how that business operates, its mindset and how we can work best for [the drivers]."

The answer was delivered in the form of the three cab drivers – Russell Hall, Gary Jackson and Terry Runham – who had set up a company called Taxilight to arrange deals on journeys for the 40% of the time when black cabs are empty, typically on their way into London or returning home.

The meeting in Double J's between the drivers and Zeghibe was set up by Jay Bregman, who had a company that electronically tracked couriers, and was also attended by Caspar Woolley, a former Liberal Democrat election candidate.

By January 2011, Hailo had offices on HMS President, a converted first world war ship on the Thames at Blackfriars, with Bregman as chief executive and Woolley as chief operating officer. "We were the eighth app to launch in London. Addison Lee had [had] an app for two years. You had Kabbee and GetTaxi [among others]. All these guys had a headstart and should have been able to get the market share.

"The problem, I think, was that most of them looked at getting the customers. We flipped that on its head. With the help of these guys on the inside we realised that what it is really about is building the loyalty [of] the driver base," Zeghibe said.

Credit-card facilities were included to counter the fact that two-thirds of London taxis at the time could not take cards, a social networking function was added to tell drivers which areas were busy with work, as well as accounting features to show how much they had earned.

Drivers pay 10% of the cost of the job when they pick up a customer, while the app got rid of additional costs such as "run-in" fees (charged from when a driver takes the booking) to market black cabs as being value for money.

Meanwhile, the three drivers worked to bring their fellow cabbies on board using the catchline "winning back the work".

By the time they launched the app in the latter half of 2011, they had 800 drivers signed up. Today, that stands at about 14,000 in London.

Expansion to Dublin happened in July 2012, which has a large over-supply of drivers. Of the city's 10,000 around 6,000 are signed up to Hailo.

One month's profits from Dublin was used to launch in Cork, Galway and Limerick. Toronto and Chicago followed although there were legal stumbling blocks in New York that caused a delay. Osaka was set up to test the Japanese market before the attempt to take on Tokyo, a city of 13 million people.

Zeghibe said: "The ambition from the start was a global network. The taxi booking business is the first step in building that network. We are not spending millions of dollars to build a social network. If you are going to have a platform and a network, you need a backbone to it. You want to be in London, New York, a number of other hub cities in the US, and you want to get to Asia and ultimately over time have a global network. We will be able to pick [smaller cities such as Manchester and Birmingham] off [later]."

Institutional backers own most of the company with the management team retaining a "very substantial share" but profitability as a group "would be too premature at this stage" as it grows, he said.

They have 50,000 drivers signed up internationally and plan to open in six more cities this year.

Recently, Bregman has suggested expanding the app to include local services, with Zeghibe talking about offering deals on data roaming as an example.

"2015 is the kind of time when we will be looking to expand into lots of cities. It is the kind of thing where we would be doubling or tripling in size," said Zeghibe.

Where it works

Hailo currently operates in London, across Ireland, Madrid, Barcelona, Boston, Chicago, Washington, New York, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal, Tokyo and Osaka.

Expansion is dictated by which cities are seen as being "taxi towns", according to Zeghibe. While Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the United States with 3.8 million people, it has just 2,000 cabs. San Francisco is similar with 1,400 cabs – fewer than Cork in Ireland.

"Chicago, however, is a taxi town. The old chequered cab? That is where they were built. And they have the second-largest fleet after New York – because there is an old downtown," said Zeghibe.

Co-op Group faces tough questions over bank's £1.3bn loss

Lord Myners is under intense pressure to rethink his initial plans, which include scrapping the current board. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

The troubled Co-operative Group faces fresh controversy this week when its banking arm scrambles to explain how it racked up £1.3bn of losses last year. Lord Myners, the director appointed to overhaul the way the mutual organisation is run, is also coming under growing pressure to rethink his blueprint for reform.

The bank – now just 30% owned by the Co-op Group – delayed its 2013 results last month and pledged to publish the full detail of the losses "on or before" Tuesday 8 April . It is not yet clear when they will be released, potentially unleashing fresh controversy over pay, as details of the rewards to Niall Booker, the new bank boss parachuted in last year, are expected to be revealed.

Booker was part of the team assembled by Euan Sutherland, the boss of the Co-op Group, whose operations include supermarkets, funeral homes and pharmacies. Sutherland walked out last month, after details of his £6.6m two-year deal were published by the Observer, a departure that sparked a fresh crisis at the Co-op and forced Myners, appointed in December with a remit to overhaul the governance of the group, to publish his ideas a month earlier than planned.

Myners is under intense pressure to rethink his initial plans, which include scrapping the current board which comprises 15 members from regional boards, five from the independent co-op and himself, the sole independent director.

He is suggesting setting up a board more akin to a public company with a seat for the chief executive and a separate national members' council to represent the views of the 7 million members who own the Co-op.

But this idea will need the backing of the powerful regions, which have the potential to block Myners' plans, and it is also facing resistance from some quarters because it does not give members a direct voice on the boards. This has raised fears that the axing of the regional boards would reduce the accountability of senior management.

The regional boards have a say over 78% of the votes at crucial member meetings which will be called to endorse reforms. The North West board has yet to meet, but many of the boards met on Friday and Saturday and concerns are said to have been voiced about the initial proposals.

There are suggestions that they have voted against the Myners' proposals although some stress there has been no formal show of hands and that the proposals are not complete.

Myners, who was chairman of Guardian Media Group before he became Labour's City minister during the 2008 banking crisis, is expected to publish the full version of the first stage of his report later this month – after the Co-op's results are released on 17 April when losses of at least £2bn are expected.

Sutherland's departure has left the group without a permanent replacement as chief executive while it faces ongoing controversy over the retention packages handed to other members of his team.

The bank's annual report should reveal whether Booker received theretention packages handed to other members of the remaining group executives, including Richard Pennycook, the former Morrison's finance director. He is currently acting chief executive and under pressure to hand back the £900,000-a-year retention payment which came on top of his similar size salary. The annual report will reveal any ongoing payments to past directors of the bank.

The group also needs to decide whether to back a surprise £400m fundraising initiative announced by the bank last month to cover a fresh wave of compensation from customers. It would need to find £120m if it is to maintain its 30% stake.