The Latest: Latest retail sales data suggests that the pace of the UK economic expansion may have been easing further over the last quarter of 2018 and we remain somewhat less confident in the growth outlook than some hard data would suggest, and more wary of possible downside risks. Despite an ongoing pick up in wages, which grew at their fastest

The Latest: On 9 November a letter from UK Prime Minister Theresa May to the leadership of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was leaked, exposing the UK government's potential plan to agree to a so-called 'backstop to the backstop' related to the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit

Key View:

• The introduction of a GBP16.0/tonne carbon emissions tax in the event of a no-deal Brexit is a positive development for industry, reducing uncertainty with regard to the composition of future carbon tax in a no-deal scenario.
• Furthermore, ambiguous rhetoric around the future of the UK’s current Carbon Price Floor from 2021 raises

Key View

• The ability of Command Centres to pull in streams of real-time data from multiple sources will support Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as its aims reduce unnecessary hospital stays.
• GE Healthcare will aim to increase adoption of the model and this will be supported by evidence of reduced wait times in the US.
• The

Key View

• Political focus in the latter stages of 2018 and early 2019 will be wholly focused on preparing for Brexit, with domestic and foreign policy objectives falling by the wayside.
• Fiscal prudence is likely to be relaxed slightly, as concerns mount over crime rates, and a struggling nationalised health service (NHS).
• Despite a weakened

Key View

• We are maintaining our 2018 real growth forecast for the UK construction industry at 1.6% y-o-y. Brexit related uncertainty remains the largest threat to our forecasts for the UK construction sector.
• The UK is most likely to leave the EU but retain some form of single market and customs union access, which would be supportive of our

Key View: Increasing incidence of labour strike action in the UK and Norwegian offshore infrastructure raises the risk to the timely completion of project timelines as well as the longer term investment attractiveness of the region.

• Unresolved labour disputes raise the risk of disruption to project timelines.
• Further striking and powerful

Key View: Although the UK banking sector has proven resilient to Brexit uncertainty, we warn that with the official exit date less than a year away and little progress on reaching a settlement deal with the EU, industry headwinds are intensifying. While it is difficult to gauge the likelihood and impact of a serious shock to the sector, we believe

Fitch Ratings maintains a stable rating outlook for the UK credit card sector, based on the buffer between UK trusts' current performance and the agency's through the cycle steady-state assumptions.

Our latest UK Credit Card Index shows that the performance of Fitch-rated credit card trusts is largely unchanged from the previous quarter. The three

Fitch Ratings says the 'AAA' ratings of covered bonds' issued by major UK banks are resilient to a deterioration in their environment, notably from Brexit. They benefit from a large cushion against a downgrade of the banks' Issuer Default Ratings (IDR), low maturity mismatches, significant over-collateralisation (OC) buffers and high quality