Listed UK housebuilders are taking some punishment this morning on the back of Michael Gove's cladding plan - they're down 2.5-4.5% while FTSE 100 is flat
Early days of course, but a sign that the market, at least, judges they might be compelled to fork out sizeable sums
...Analysts at the stockbroker Jefferies say the official letter unearthed by #newnight 's @lewis_goodall shows the Treasury is determined that housebulders should pay for remedial action *not* taxpayers - hence the hit to their share prices today...
...don't read too much into market reactions as to the impact/effectiveness of government policy - but it's notable that traders aren't currently assuming Gove's plan will leave housebuilders' profit outlooks unscathed
...Suspect this bit of Gove's letter to the housebuilders alone might explain the shareprice move...gov.uk/government/pub…
...the colossal boost given by Help to Buy to housebuilders' profits is well known (FT article expands) - if such government schemes were likely to be less forthcoming in fututre that alone would justify a share price correction ft.com/content/048fd6…
Housebuilders end trading day 🔽3 to 5%
A bad day for the listed housebuilders 👇
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
...Of course, one of the agonies of people caught up in this crisis is that they often can't sell their flat because the banks won't lend a mortgage to a prospective buyer of a property of potentially zero value.
Which means many are effectively trapped in an unsellable home....
...So will the plan unlock bank financing & liberate people?
UK Finance @UKFtweets which represents lenders tells me tonight that Gove's plan is a "positive step"...
This is very interesting and potentially important - the Climate Change Committee takes issue with the argument of the Treasury in its Net Zero Review that decarbonisation investments should NOT be financed from public borrowing... theccc.org.uk/publication/in…
...As the CCC says, future generations benefit from decarbonisation so reasonable for them (rather than solely current taxpayers) to pay part of the cost through higher borrowing with interest bill spread across coming decades...
....Plus - Sunak's "Green Gilts" = funding decarbonisation through borrowing
@BBCNewsnight has seen a letter from gas shipper CNG - which is exiting the wholesale market - to struggling domestic energy supplier firms saying that have only until 30 November to find a new shipper...
...The letter also confirms these domestic supplier firms will NOT be able to transfer any hedges they have with CNG against soaring wholesale gas prices to a new shipper...
...“I am sorry to advise you that hedges are deemed to be an asset of CNG’s wholesale shipping business and must therefore be ring fenced for the benefit of creditors generally. The cannot be novated nor the value of these hedges transferred.”...
Two of the largest holes in the government's net zero plans in June according to the Climate Change Committee (the government's official decarbonisation watchdog) were on encouraging public diet change and curbing demand for flights....
...Now, in the week of its official Net Zero Strategy document, the Governments states:
"We have no plans whatsoever to dictate consumer behaviour in this way. For that reason, our Net Zero Strategy published yesterday contained no such plans".
"We have no plans whatsoever to dictate consumer behaviour"
So says the gov, on why it deleted a paper from its Net Zero Strategy doc dump yesterday which suggested ways to change public behaviour (flying less, eating less meat) to hit targets...
...Hard to see how that government statement on *not* encouraging behaviour change fits with that CCC requirement.
CCC reprentatives were pretty warm about the Net Zero Strategy docs yesterday - but keep a close eye on how they treat this latest line from the government.
"Of course in BEIS [business department] we want to spending more on our individual policies....but in total we're very satisfied with the amounts we've received today", business minister Lord Callanan tells @maitlis on @BBCNewsnight
Lord Callanan on the decision not to announce ban on new gas boiler sales: "It's our ambition to phase gas boilers out from 2035...but we want to make sure the alternatives are in place first"
On support for steel sector amid the energy price crisis: "Clearly we want to look after these industries as much as we possibly can...I'll leave [colleagues at BEIS and Treasury] to announce the result of any discussion"