UK

The UK's economic recovery is "not yet secure", Chancellor George Osborne has warned, ahead of next month's Budget.

Investor confidence in the UK has strengthened considerably over the past 12 months, according to the latest investor confidence survey from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).

Britain must see a business recovery before interest rates can begin to rise, according to Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England.

Weaker US data and ongoing expectations of tighter UK monetary policy have helped boost gold and sterling respectively as the dollar loses ground.

Henderson Strategic Bond fund manager John Pattullo has moved aggressively in to gilts in a bid to hedge against a worldwide deflationary shock caused by the chaos in emerging markets.

Contrarian views on the UK from Fidelity's Alex Wright

Former Financial Services Authority (FSA) chairman Lord Turner has warned that the UK has failed to rebalance its economy and is simply repeating the errors made in the run-up to the 2007/8 financial crisis.

Investor confidence in UK shares rose at the start of February, according to the latest Lloyds Bank Private Banking Investor Sentiment Index, to reach its highest point in the survey's one year history.

The UK economy will grow by 2.5% this year and again by 2.1% in 2015, according to the National Institute of Social and Economic Research (NIESR).

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