Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog.
Fresh figures this morning have shown the UK economy was flat in the first month of the year. It marked a blow to the government’s growth agenda but this will likely be viewed as a small blow ahead of global economies being thrown into turmoil by the conflict in the Middle East.
The price price of oil settled back in triple digits on Thursday as the crisis around the Strait of Hormuz ramped up.
In his first statement since taking the helm, Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to continue blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the vital narrow waterway in which a fifth of the world’s oil supply flows through.
Khamenei said the regime would also “avenge the blood” of those killed in US and Israeli attacks.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said the current crisis has caused the “largest disruption to crude supplies in the history of the global oil market”.
The group made a record intervention in the market on Wednesday, with the release of 400m barrels from the strategic reserves.
But Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, warned the move would have little effect: “The math is simple: 400m barrels would only be enough to meet the IEA’s oil demand for roughly 9-10 days.
“After that? The IEA system is estimated to hold around 1.2 billion barrels. It goes fast. Its head, Fatih Birol, said that only the resumption of normal trade through the Strait of Hormuz would help. Well, that’s not on the menu du jour.”
Here’s a few of our top stories from yesterday
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