ended without an agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn London, the FTSE 100 rose 22 points, or 0.21%, to 10,605. Imperial Brands, which makes Davidoff and West cigarettes as well as vapes, was leading the FTSE 100 losers after flagging a \u201cmore uncertain geopolitical and macro environment\u201d.<\/p>\n
The UK recruitment company PageGroup said the Middle East conflict was \u201cdriving an increasingly uncertain outlook for the rest of the year\u201d, with the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Asia \u201ctough markets\u201d and salaries below those in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n
HSBC has a 31% stake in Saudi Awwal Bank. The London-headquartered lender is among the European banks most exposed to the Middle East, a region that accounts for roughly 4% of its pre-tax profit, according to analysts at JP Morgan Chase.<\/p>\n
However, Elhedery said the bank had seen only \u201cvery benign movement\u201d of capital out of the Middle East so far.<\/p>\n
Since the US and Israel began attacking Iran on 28 February, some wealthy investors based in the Middle East have been exploring whether to relocate to places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
The HSBC chair, Brendan Nelson, stressed that a Middle East peace \u200bdeal was essential to ensure a substantial resumption of global energy \u200cflows, with oil-driven inflation posing a big risk to the world economy.<\/p>\n
Nelson, also speaking at the HSBC Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong, said: \u201cThe longer the \u200bdisruption continues, the more the indirect effects from higher energy costs will lift \u200cinflation \u2060and depress growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garment makers that use polyester and other synthetic fabrics, which are derived from petroleum products, have been hit. Tom Beahon, a co-founder and co-chief executive of the sportswear company Castore, which makes Premier League football kits and England cricket kits, said costs had gone up between 10% and 15%, and if the Iran war went on for another couple of months then some of this would be passed on to consumers.<\/p>\n
Beahon told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme: \u201cThe biggest challenge has been around the volatility. So it\u2019s very difficult to plan when prices might be going up as high as 40% one day but then dropping down significantly again the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the other challenge was to ship products, as airlines had reduced flights and ships were still stranded in the strait of Hormuz. \u201cBut there is a hope that if things start to get sorted out in the next few weeks, they won\u2019t have a significant impact on customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, Corneel Koster, told the Financial Times that jet fuel prices were more than double prewar levels. He said: \u201cNo matter what happens in the Gulf going forward \u2026 some of this disruption to global energy prices will be here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Rachel Reeves headed to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank\u2019s spring meetings in Washington, she called for coordinated economic action. \u201cThe Iran conflict must be a line in the sand on how we deal with global crisis and instability,\u201d the chancellor said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HSBC bosses have said the Iran war is already hitting global economic confidence, as a string of business…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-378791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}