British businesses confidence before last Friday's GDP miss
Blloomberg out with a report of a Lloyds Bank survey, conducted before Friday's weak 1Q growth data was released, showing that British businesses were feeling upbeat about the economy,
Just over half said they were more optimistic about the economy than they were three months ago, but the balance expecting stronger trading fell. The survey of 1,200 companies was carried out between March 29 and April 18. The pound strengthened in that period, climbing to its highest level against the dollar since the Brexit vote, and inflation slowed down to 2.5 percent.
However, in March retail and manufacturing reports all showed data misses and developments since the survey may point to that prior confidence being short-lived. Figures on Friday showed the economy registered its worst performance since the end of 2012 in the first quarter
