- Rob Dobson, an economist at Markit in London
The British factory activity declined beyond expectations in November, however, still demonstrating solid growth after having reached a 16-month high in the prior month. More precisely, the Markit/CIPS PMI measure of business activity in the UK manufacturing dropped to 52.7 in November from October's 55.2. The figure came against analysts' projections of 53.6. Nevertheless, the manufacturing sector remained above average in 2015 expanding for 32 successive months.
As concerns the BOE's stress test measuring how well banks would deal with a financial crisis, all in all seven biggest banks in the UK were tested, namely Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland. The two latter lenders were singled out by the central bank for not meeting certain capital thresholds. In spite of that, the BoE said that neither of the two banks needed to raise additional capital and that both passed the exercise. Moreover, the BoE revealed its most recent Financial Stability Report estimating the threats to Britain's financial stability. The FPC stated that it projects the counter-cyclical buffer to be in the region of 1% of a bank's risk-weighted assets in the future. The BoE Governor Mark Carney pointed out that UK banks are more resilient now than they were before the financial crisis.
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