UK growth at 4-year low as BoE eyes rate hikes

Britain’s economy grew at its slowest pace since 2013 in the 12 months after last year’s Brexit vote, data showed yesterday, painting a subdued picture as the Bank of England prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade.

The world’s fifth-biggest economy was just 1.5% bigger than a year earlier in the second quarter, the weakest year-on-year expansion in more than four years and down from a rate of 1.8% in the first three months of the year.

Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) had previously estimated second-quarter growth at 1.7%, and none of the economists polled by Reuters before the data had expected such a big downward revision.