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Conflicts, climate change and trade tensions mean central banks will need to raise interest rates “more forcefully” during future bouts of inflation to prevent price pressures taking hold, a senior official at the Bank for International Settlements has said.

Andréa Maechler, deputy general manager at the Basel-based umbrella body for central banks, said monetary policymakers could no longer afford to “look through” short-term price spikes caused by disruption to the supply side of the economy — such as crop failures, blockages in ports, swings in commodity prices or shutdowns at oil refineries.

Such shocks could become “larger and more frequent” because of rising geopolitical risk, more widespread floods and droughts and a “bumpy transition” to greener technologies, she said.

“This may require adjustments to the conduct of monetary policy,” Maechler said. “At times, forceful monetary tightening will be needed to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored.”

Her comments, at an event on Wednesday in London, came as the worsening conflict in the Middle East pushed up oil prices and economists warned strikes by US dockworkers could inflate goods prices if their actions lasted longer than a week.

She said ageing populations and rising barriers to globalisation would make it harder for economies to adjust to this kind of disruption, as labour shortages became more widespread and there was less scope “for international trade to act as a shock absorber of domestic inflationary pressures”.

Maechler highlighted trends observed after the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that once inflation had begun to rise, a further shock to oil or food prices can have an “outsize influence” on people’s trust in the stability of money. That response can lead to sudden changes in behaviour of households and businesses that leads to inflation becoming entrenched.

“All this means that inflation could become more volatile, raising the risk that economies transition more easily from self-stabilising low-inflation regimes to self-reinforcing high-inflation regimes,” she said.

The BIS has long been a hawkish voice, warning central banks as early as 2010 of the dangers of adopting ultra-low interest rates for too long, a warning delivered shortly before the eurozone debt crisis forced the European Central Bank to cut rates further into negative territory for the best part of a decade.

But its views have gained currency over the past few years as central banks raised interest rates to their highest levels since the global financial crisis to tame inflation.

Prices surged in 2022 on the back of pent-up demand after Covid-19, global supply chain disruptions and higher energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Although the US Federal Reserve, ECB and Bank of England are increasingly confident inflation is subsiding, potentially enabling them to continue cutting rates in the coming months, policymakers have signalled they do not expect interest rates to return to pre-pandemic lows.

SPLASHING out on a coffee pick-me-up doesn’t need to cost as much as you think it does.

Dee Bespalova, named the best Starbucks barista in the UK, has shared her top tips on how to save money – including the secret to free refills.

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Star barista Dee was awarded after taking on her fellow Starbucks coffee connoisseurs from up and down the country.

She has now shared her top tips for saving money at Starbucks – and who better to get the inside information from?

Buying coffee on the go can be shockingly expensive when added up over time.

According to Wholesale Coffee Co, Brits spend on average £5.50 per week on coffee, which is £286 a year.

And on average, people who buy a Starbucks three times a week spending approximately £54 a month, which is a whopping £648 annually.

At The Sun, we always recommend you make coffee from home to save money.

For example, with Tesco Clubcard prices you can buy 6 sachets of Costa Barista Creations in any flavour for £1.75 – that’s 30p a coffee.

Meanwhile, a Starbucks can typically set you back around £4.50 for one drink, or up to £6.55 for special recipes.

Starbucks prices change based on availability, and between locations.

However, we also know that, sometimes, a DIY coffee from home isn’t quite as exciting as a Starbucks on the go.

And with experts like Dee making the coffee, sometimes it’s okay to spend a little extra on a hot drink you know you’ll love.

For this reason, we put together Dee’s top tips for enjoying a Starbucks the savvy way – so you don’t have to miss out on that coffee catch up with friends.

By combining all of these tips across the year, a person who drinks three coffees a week and spends £648 annually will save £343.20.

The amount you save will vary depending on how much you typically spend of course.

GET FREE REFILLS – £271.20

One of the most exciting tips Dee whispered to The Sun was that filter coffee-drinkers are actually able to get refills for free.

She said: “Whilst lattes and flat whites are many people’s favourites, if your usual order is a black coffee, or a coffee with just a splash of milk, consider asking whether your local store offers filter coffee, which you can swap out for your americano and enjoy a free refill.”

A filter coffee at Starbucks is easy on the wallet too, starting at just £1.95. 

If you were to buy two americanos (£3.80 each), this would cost you £7.60.

If you did this once a week for a year, you would rack up a spending of £364.80.

Instead, you could save a total of £5.65 a visit by ordering a filter coffee and getting a free refill instead.

If you did this once a week for a year instead, you’d spend £93.60 a year – saving £271.20 across the year just by swapping for filter coffee.

Dee recommends going up and asking your barista if it offers filter coffees, as they are not in all stores and might not always be on the menu at the tills where you’ll usually find the latest additions and seasonal drinks on show.

You’ll need to purchase the first drink to have in to then qualify for a free tall refill.

SWAP SYRUPS – £72

When you fancy your coffee with a little twist, a syrup will usually do the trick – but if you are looking to save, there is a cheaper option.

You can swap out the dairy milk for an alternative to bring a different flavour to your drink.  

According to Dee, dairy alternatives at Starbucks are offered at no extra charge.

Customers can request oat, soy, almond or coconut milk.

“But if you’re a bit stuck for where to start, choose a drink with a dairy alternative as standard”, she told The Sun.

“For example, the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso is designed to work best with the delicious roast nutty flavours of oat dairy alternative.”

Starbucks is one of very few chains which offers completely free milk alternatives.

In Costa for instance, soya is the only non-dairy milk you can buy free of charge. For oat or coconut, the customer must spend 45p.

A shot of syrup at Starbucks typically costs 50p, so you can save £1.50 a week based on having three drinks a week on average – that’s £6 a month, and £72 a year.

Of course, keep in mind that out calculations are based three coffees a week – the amount you save will vary based on how much you usually spend on coffee.

GET FREEBIES WITH STARBUCKS REWARDS – £72

Regular Starbucks customers can download the Starbucks app and collect points, which can be used to gain free rewards.

Dee said: “It pays to be loyal and Starbucks Rewards is quick and easy to use.”

Customers can collect three stars for every £1 spent, and when you reach 150 stars, you’ll get a free drink of any size.

If customers reach 450 stars, they will be rewarded with Gold status.

This means extra shots of espresso, selected syrups and whipped cream are all on the house. 

Each of these extras usually cost 50p, meaning you could save £s off a single purchase.

If you cashed in on these extras three times a week, you’d save £1.50 – that’s £6 a month, and £72 a year.

To begin collecting rewards, download the Starbucks app and sign up with your email address.

However, keep in mind that with all schemes such as these, the goal of the company is to get you spending more money.

If you become a rewards member, be sure to use it as a perk, and not an excuse to buy more coffees when you’re out of the house – otherwise you will lose money rather than saving it.

Also remember that having apps and email notifications from businesses like Starbucks may subconsciously encourage you to spend more money, so be mindful of marketing influences.

In moderation, rewards are much more enjoyable.

To find the nearest Starbucks near you, visit their website.

Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.

Plus, you can join our Sun Money Chats and Tips Facebook group to share your tips and stories

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

LVMH will become a top sponsor of car racing franchise Formula One as the leading luxury group pushes further into the world of sport.

The agreement will start in 2025 and run for a decade, LVMH said on Wednesday. The deal is worth just under €100mn per year, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement.

It will involve several of Bernard Arnault’s luxury empire’s top brands including Louis Vuitton, the world’s biggest luxury brand by sales, drinks division Moët Hennessy and watchmaker Tag Heuer.

The deal was led by Frédéric Arnault, the second youngest of the billionaire patriarch’s five children, who was promoted to head LVMH’s watchmaking division at the start of the year.

He was previously chief executive of Tag Heuer and is a graduate of France’s top engineering school Ecole Polytechnique, like his father.

“The opportunity to scale our commercial arrangements is emblematic of the vision we have for Formula 1 as the business continues to grow . . . We look forward to working with Bernard and Frédéric Arnault in the years to come,” said Greg Maffei, president and chief executive of Formula 1 owner Liberty Media.

Luxury groups have increasingly targeted sports to grow their audience and popularity. While luxury has long been associated with elite sports like show jumping and tennis, links with more mainstream sports like basketball and football are becoming more frequent.

The French group’s deeper foray into the world of racing follows its high profile sponsorship of the Paris Olympics, where bars flowed with Moët Hennessy drinks and athletes were awarded medals made by LVMH-owned jeweller Chaumet.

However, a several minutes long sequence in the opening ceremony centred around monogrammed Louis Vuitton trunks raised some eyebrows as sponsors pushed into previously ad-free spaces in the global sporting event.

Earlier this year LVMH launched a new Louis Vuitton ad campaign featuring tennis stars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal hiking in the Italian Dolomites. It was a new iteration of a 2022 campaign featuring footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi playing chess.

Formula One, meanwhile, has been on a years-long push into new markets and new audiences. Since US-based Liberty Media acquired it for $8bn in 2017, the racing calendar has expanded to flashy locales in Miami and Las Vegas, and Netflix docu-series Drive to Survive has helped boost viewership.

The share of female F1 fans has risen to 40 per cent, from 32 per cent in 2018, helping to attract women-focused sponsors. Earlier this year, Charlotte Tilbury cosmetics debuted the first sport sponsorship of its own with the F1 Academy.

All five Arnault children have operational roles within family-controlled LVMH. All except the youngest, Jean, have seats on the group’s board. Frédéric and Alexandre, an executive at jeweller Tiffany, joined their siblings on the board earlier this year.

Additional reporting by Sara Germano

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Fashion is in a state of flux. That was clear at the spring/summer 2025 shows in Paris, where brands attempted to chart a path forward, having felt the sting of China’s economic slowdown and a prolonged downturn in luxury spending globally. Some have also had to contend with transitions in creative direction amid evolving consumer preferences, resulting in less convincing collections. 

For Chanel, the lack of a designer is still a missing piece of the puzzle. But not for long, according to president of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky, who says an appointment will be made by the end of the month. That’s good news for the world’s second-largest personal luxury brand, which has been without an artistic director since June, when Virginie Viard stepped down, capping a career of almost three decades at the house. (Viard became creative director at Chanel in 2019 following the death of Karl Lagerfeld.)

One ill-fitting appointment could divert Chanel off its double-digit growth path (it reached $19.7bn in 2023). Pavlovsky (and global chief executive Leena Nair) is moving cautiously. “You have some designers who are very talented, but when they join a brand, you see [them] and forget the brand. We are not looking for this kind of designer, but one who is ready to support the brand, to help it develop and modernise. It’s important that this person is not doing that for just two or three years. [We want to] build the next 10 years together.”

Chanel recently purchased a property on the prestigious Avenue Montaigne for an undisclosed sum, following similar real estate purchases in Paris and other cities the previous year. And this week, it returned to the Grand Palais — the site where Lagerfeld staged his most memorable shows — after a four-year break for renovations, to present its collection of sheer capes, shirts and dresses with billowing sleeves, sequinned denim and updated tweed sets.

Pavlovsky effused over the stature of the Beaux-Arts building, which hosted the Olympics and the recent Francophonie Summit that is attended by global heads of states and governments. Having an association with the storied venue cements Chanel’s authority and emphasises its links to culture, creation and craft, he believes. “To illustrate this, we need to have some strong visible locations.” But for all its fancy facade, the missing touch of a creative director was palpable, and the location outshone the clothes.

Japanese designers continue to fly the flag for originality and disrupt the status quo. They’ll do as they please, and it works

The same could be said of Coperni, which seems to be competing to outdo itself each season. After viral shows that have included robot dogs and Bella Hadid being spray-painted live in a dress, designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant stepped it up once more, stealing the week’s closing spot (normally belonging to Louis Vuitton) with an off-schedule show at Disneyland and a finale by Kylie Jenner, wearing a dark strapless gown. I spotted updates to Coperni’s top-selling Swipe bag, but the dimly lit street lamps made it harder to see some of the looks. Not that editors and influencers, many of whom had a blast going on rollercoaster rides that ran past midnight, seemed to mind.

It made me question the purpose of a runway show, which for some brands has become less about the clothes and more about the entertainment factor. Both can coexist. At the Louis Vuitton show, Cate Blanchett, Lisa and Zendaya watched models walk on elevated trunks. Staged at the brand’s usual location, the Louvre, designer Nicolas Ghesquière continued to experiment with flouncy silhouettes that lent a lighter touch to his typical architectural shapes: see the jackets with rounded shoulders and peplum hems. Less convincing were the one-leg skirt-trouser hybrid (a style that also appeared on the runways at Coperni and Bottega Veneta in Milan). All in all, it was a cohesive show that offered desirable new styles.

More than four decades since Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons spearheaded a historical revolution in Paris fashion, the Japanese designers — and the generation that followed, including Junya Watanabe, Sacai and Jun Takahashi’s Undercover — continue to fly the flag for originality and disrupt the status quo. They’ll do as they please, and it works. Takahashi, for example, vetoed a runway in favour of a more intimate gathering at Dover Street Market Paris, where he offered a Japanese breakfast to enjoy alongside belted modular clothes. Meanwhile, Kawakubo leaned even further into sculptural looks that reminded me of strawberry meringues and were not in any sense wearable, but the theatricality of her shows actually sells products in stores.

Catering to the client by giving them what they want, but also presenting new ideas for how to dress, is a balancing act that several designers are still navigating. It’s something that Nadège Vanhée does well; the Hermès designer stuck to a predictable but luxurious beige and leather offering from what I could see (journalists were sat in flat rows and I was at the far back, while clients attending with unique, limited-edition Hermès bag styles enjoyed a clearer view of the show, thanks to their raked seating — let’s not kid ourselves, we know who the priority is here).

Victoria Beckham staged her show at a spectacular château, which was suitable for the filming of her upcoming Netflix show, but the clothes veered arty and experimental, with wet looks and slit trousers, that didn’t feel aligned with the brand. Seán McGirr appears to be figuring out what the Alexander McQueen customer wants. For his sophomore collection, he took a gentler and sophisticated approach that appeared to correspond better commercially, but one hopes he is given the freedom to evolve in a way that doesn’t lose the grit and essence of the brand’s founder. Stella McCartney needs to rethink her offering at a time when younger generations are consuming differently and renting or buying second-hand, for example, instead of expensive and new (it takes more than an assertive slogan).

Carven continues to be in safe hands with Louise Trotter, now into her third season as creative director and settling into her studio above the store (parent company Icicle bought the entire building, a place where founder Marie-Louise Carven used to work). We’ve seen the messy collars and shirts jutting out of jackets before at Miu Miu, but it still felt fresh. New this time were sporty track pieces, cut-out body suits with knee-length skirts, and knits wrapped around the waist over camisoles. Also appealing is Gabriela Hearst, who is back from showing in New York and whose passion for materials innovation is like few others (what appeared to be a gold-coloured dress was in fact made of 96 per cent copper and 4 per cent silk).

The designers that really hit the mark in Paris, however, were not those with the biggest budgets, but the independent names with an individual point of view and excellent craftsmanship to match. Who would have thought that Duran Lantink, known for creating garments from deadstock, would be one of the hottest tickets of the season? This time he demonstrated even greater finesse: there were not only conceptual looks but some great trousers. Niccolò Pasqualetti, Hodakova, Rokh and Torishéju also impressed with their individual takes, proving that on a big playing field, small businesses worth their salt can still shine through.

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THE BEST pizzas in Britain have been revealed, but does your hometown favourite make the cut?

Pizza is undoubtedly a much loved food among Brits, with a variety of toppings plus vegetarian and vegan options to choose from.

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Now, we know exactly where to go to find the perfect slice.

Following the 2024 National Pizza Awards, the 16 UK finalists have been unveiled.

The list includes both high street chains and indie joints.

On November 12 at London’s Big Penny Social, the finalists will fight for the title of Pizza Chef of the Year in a live cooking challenge.

It’ll be a technical task where the finalists must create “the ultimate pizza”, as reported by Time Out.

Assessed by a panel of beady-eyed expert judges.

This year will also see the introduction of The Alternative Slice Award.

Whoever puts together the most delectable dish using free-from products will claim this title.

Earlier this year, the pizzeria in London was crowned as the best in Europe a the World 50 Top Pizza Awards.

Napili on the Road, owned by Michele Pascarella, scooped up the award dubbed the Michelin Awards of pizzerias.

The selection process for the Top 50 awards is “very mysterious” and includes anonymous restaurant visits by pizza critics.

Not only is Napoli on the Road Europe’s best pizzeria, but Michele was also named the world’s best pizza chef at the awards in 2023.

Born in Caserta near Naples, Michele started making pizzas when he was just 11 years old.

After moving to the UK aged 19, he set up Napoli on the Road, which as its name suggests, started out life as a food truck selling slices at food markets and festivals.

Since then he has settled in his spot in Chiswick, where his talents have now earned him global recognition.

With several awards now under his belt, it’s safe to say that Michele knows exactly how Brits should be eating pizza too, and as it turns out some of us might be doing that wrong.

He told the Daily Mail: “‘I think there are few mistakes about eating pizza, for example, overloading with too many toppings, making it difficult to enjoy the base, using a knife and fork instead of eating it with their hands, not pairing it with a suitable beverage – missing out on a complete dining experience, and adding chilli oil everywhere.”

It comes after a burger shack in Rye has been crowned the best place in the UK to grab a quick bite to eat.

And a restaurant in Solihull less than a 10-minute drive away from Birmingham Airport has been crowned the best “hidden gem” restaurant in Britain.