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A former UK energy industry lobbyist has been appointed to the influential role of leading the government’s climate policy watchdog as it prepares to set a new legal limit on the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Climate Change Committee said Emma Pinchbeck, head of trade body Energy UK, would take over in November, ahead of its publication of a new “carbon budget” next year for the 2038-42 period.

The UK was the first major economy to set a legally binding target five years ago to reach net zero by 2050, but the committee has since advised bluntly and repeatedly that it was not moving fast enough.

The 38-year-old Pinchbeck represented the interests of Energy UK’s approximately 100 members across the heat, electricity, transport and tech sectors, which it said generated about 80 per cent of the UK’s power through wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass and gas.

While it also represents some members involved in oil and gas extraction, UK Energy says it does not advocate for these parts of their business and agrees only to cover specific activities such as renewables.

The trade group said Pinchbeck had been a “powerful advocate” of the transition to clean energy. In the role, she also spoke in favour of burning biomass for power generation and promoted carbon capture, storage and utilisation, which some scientists and environmentalists believe is being promoted by the oil and gas industry to prolong fossil fuel production.

The government announced £21.7bn in support spread for the country’s first carbon capture and storage projects last week, being developed by Italian oil group Eni, BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies. The programme will run for 25 years, relying on a mix of taxpayer funding and higher energy bills.

Pinchbeck also has experience in the non-profit sector as former head of climate change and energy at WWF-UK. But it was her private sector background that CCC interim chair Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics, said would help in assessing the UK’s plans to decarbonise energy.

The committee has been without a permanent head since its outspoken former chief, Chris Stark, stepped down in April. He then warned the UK was losing out on green investment because of the policy rollbacks under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Stark is now leading the new government’s “mission control” attempt to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030.

Ed Miliband, UK energy secretary, said Pinchbeck was “well placed to advise and challenge government” on its net zero goals, ensuring it meets its climate commitments with “ambition and urgency”.

Within its first weeks in office, the Labour government also selected former Siemens UK chief executive Jürgen Maier to chair the £8.3bn state-owned GB Energy, which will own, manage and operate clean power projects and support carbon capture and hydrogen development.

It also recently appointed the new UK climate envoy, Rachel Kyte, who has extensive experience in climate policy after working at the World Bank and as a professor at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

Kyte’s appointment was the subject of opposition questions in parliament this week surrounding a donation by Quadrature Capital, the investment arm of a hedge fund group that funds the independent Quadrature Climate Foundation, where Kyte is co-chair of an advisory board.

Miliband said “all the proper processes were followed” and Kyte was esteemed for her climate leadership. QCF said it was focused on “funding and supporting science-led solutions to climate change”, adding that its donation was “values-based” and that it was “non-partisan and apolitical”.

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Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla plans to meet Starboard Value, said people familiar with the matter, as the activist investor’s $1bn stake in the pharmaceutical group puts pressure on its board to revive its share price.

Bourla and at least one other director will hold talks with Starboard next week, after it emerged this weekend the fund had taken a $1bn stake, equivalent to about 0.6 per cent of the $165bn company. The Financial Times previously reported the activist investor is calling for a strategy shift.

While engagement between companies and activist investors is not unusual, the planned meeting shows Starboard’s demands are getting a hearing at the highest levels of the company. It has created an extensive slide deck on its turnaround plans but has yet to circulate it.

Starboard’s exact recommendations could not immediately be ascertained and the firm declined to comment. Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Starboard’s campaign comes after the Covid-19 vaccine maker’s shares have sunk to below pre-pandemic levels. People briefed on the activist’s thinking said it believed Pfizer had been mismanaged as the pandemic receded, notably in spending its $92bn Covid windfall on a costly $70bn acquisition spree. Pfizer’s market value has roughly halved since its pandemic peak.

Starboard will be represented at next week’s meeting by its chief executive Jeff Smith and partner Patrick Sullivan, who runs its healthcare investments, said two people familiar with the matter. Pfizer’s lead independent director, Shantanu Narayen, is expected to accompany Bourla, one person said.

In an unusual twist, two of Pfizer’s top former executives are working with Starboard. The FT on Monday reported Pfizer’s former chair and CEO Ian Read and its former finance chief Frank D’Amelio called at least four Pfizer directors to ask them to consider collaborating with the activist investor.

Read, who served as CEO for eight years before becoming executive chair, promoted Bourla to the top job. Read and D’Amelio’s involvement is a rare example of former executives collaborating with an activist investor to push for strategy or management changes.

Starboard’s investment in Pfizer is not its first brush with the healthcare sector. It unsuccessfully urged pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb to drop its $74bn acquisition of cancer drugmaker Celgene in 2019. The same year, it entered into an agreement to add four directors to the board of Cerner, a health tech company now known as Oracle Health.

Some analysts doubt Starboard can transform the valuation of Pfizer, which has already announced $5.5bn of cost cuts through till 2027 to help restore investor confidence.

Vamil Divan, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities, said in a note on Monday that many of his conversations have “focused on investors wondering if we could see a change in Pfizer’s management team”. While that was “certainly possible”, it is unclear what that would mean for the company’s dividend, an important support for the stock.

Two investors told the FT on Monday they would be receptive to management changes.

Pfizer’s directors are in Ireland for tours of local manufacturing facilities and board meetings, with the main meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

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US President Joe Biden urged people in the path of a hurricane barrelling towards Florida to evacuate their homes “now, now, now” as the catastrophic storm strengthened again on Tuesday afternoon.

Biden warned that the “devastating” Hurricane Milton, which was hurtling towards a highly populated stretch of the state’s west coast with winds of 165 miles per hour, could be one of the worst storms to hit Florida in more than a century.

Milton is on track to make landfall on Wednesday night after returning to category 5 strength, according to the National Hurricane Center, with storm surges of up to 15 feet predicted in some areas.

NHC forecasters warned that Milton had “the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida”.

As of Tuesday afternoon, millions of people living in 14 Florida counties were under mandatory evacuation order. Global risk advisory firm Guy Carpenter said Milton could cause the largest number of evacuations since Hurricane Irma in 2017, when 6.7mn people left their homes.

“This is literally catastrophic,” Tampa mayor Jane Castor said in an interview with CNN. “I can say this without any dramatisation whatsoever: if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”

Milton is the second major hurricane to hit the US in a fortnight after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across several south-eastern states, killing more than 225 people and destroying roads across western North Carolina. Verisk, a data analytics group, said on Tuesday that the insurance industry could face losses from Helene of up to $11bn.

Biden postponed an overseas trip to Germany and Angola to remain in Washington and oversee preparations for the storm, and manage the recovery efforts linked to Hurricane Helene.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made a series of false claims in the wake of Helene, accusing the government of withholding aid from Republican disaster victims. Vice-president Kamala Harris on Monday called Trump “extraordinarily irresponsible” for spreading misinformation.

The White House said on Tuesday that Biden had called the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and had spoken to Castor the previous evening to discuss plans, and had been briefed by NWS director Ken Graham on the expected effects of the storm on Florida.

DeSantis said on Fox News on Tuesday morning that the prospect of “another monster storm” hitting the state was “not easy”.

“It’s been very taxing on our citizens to have to go through this just as you’re starting to pick up the pieces from Helene,” he said. 

DeSantis warned that debris from Hurricane Helene “could become projectiles” and said he had ordered all state agencies with trucks available to help clean up destruction. 

The prospect of two big hurricanes hitting the US in quick succession threatens to strain federal emergency responses and the US economy. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president Raphael Bostic told an event in Atlanta on Tuesday that the higher frequency of hurricanes could disrupt supply chains.

Chevron, the US oil major, said it had shut down oil production at the Blind Faith platform in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of the hurricane and removed its staff from the site. 

Airports in Tampa and Orlando said they would suspend operations, and theme parks including Walt Disney World were among the businesses announcing closure plans.

Last week, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not have enough funding to make it through this year’s hurricane season.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters while en route to South Carolina following Hurricane Helene. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”

Lawmakers last month replenished FEMA’s disaster funding, providing up to $20bn as part of a short-term funding bill aimed at averting another government shutdown. In a letter to Congress last week, Biden warned that the agency’s disaster relief fund faced a shortfall at the end of the year.

Cartography by Steven Bernard

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This is an audio transcript of the Unhedged podcast episode: ‘Markets send mixed signals’

Katie Martin
US markets are a little bit weird at the moment. Rates markets are telling us that investors think the Federal Reserve will cut maybe six or seven more times in the next year, which generally means bad stuff is coming our way.

But stocks are still flying pretty high, even despite a flare up in geopolitical heat. Meanwhile, the latest jobs data from the US tells us that the economy is smoking hot. Today on the show we’re asking, what is with all the mixed signals and what are we supposed to make of it?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I’m Kate Martin, a markets columnist here at FT towers in rainy London. I’m expecting a decent soaking on my way home tonight on my bike. And hooray, Rob Armstrong off of the Unhedged newsletter is back by dope demand. He’s been doing some real shoe-leather reporting, as we journalists like to say, taking the pulse of the US economy. Rob, did you find a pulse?

Robert Armstrong
Shoe-leather reporting may flatter me a little bit. What I did is I went to a humongous mall in Pennsylvania and kind of looked around and talked to people and looked in stores and generally thought about things. It was more like I went on a trip to contemplate the US economy rather than actually doing any hardcore reporting.

Katie Martin
What’s your best anecdote from your time on the road talking to real America?

Robert Armstrong
That is a good question. Well, I’ll tell you this. I’ll pose a puzzle to you. So I went to this huge mall and all the stores in the mall opened at about 10 in the morning. And I was like just walking up and down this humongous mall. It’s like a mile long, there’s 450 stores. I didn’t see anybody do a transaction until like 11.45. So why did they open all the stores at 10? We put that as a puzzle to you. Is it because, well, the employees have to be there to fiddle the stock around anyway or do something? They might as well open the door in case there should be a customer. But nobody goes to the mall at 10. Why are the stores open at 10? You know, it’s a weird thing.

Katie Martin
But not every day can be like Black Friday.

Robert Armstrong
It’s true. Not every day. This was on a random Thursday, but I was quite struck by that. But man, Americans will shop. That place by two in the afternoon, the place was jumping. People were buying stuff. The American consumer, as judging by the King of Prussia mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, is just fine, thanks very much.

Katie Martin
Never underestimate the American consumer.

Robert Armstrong
Never.

Katie Martin
Now then, let’s start at kind of the beginning. Is the US overheating? Because there was some scorching jobs numbers we had on Friday.

Robert Armstrong
No, it’s not overheating. I mean, the great motto of the Unhedged newsletter, there’s two mottos. One motto is calm down. And the second motto is one month is just one month. So we had like three months of very . . . 

Katie Martin
OMIJOM.

Robert Armstrong
OMIJOM. That’s how we say it. OMIJOM. You know, we had three months of pretty middling job numbers. And then we did get a pretty jumpin’ report for September. But, you know, there is a lot . . . There’s a big margin for error in these surveys and, you know, as we’ve seen in the last six months or so, these numbers hop around. So until you get three strong months . . . 

Katie Martin
(Inaudible) look around but, you know, this one was hoppin’, though, right? So the US added . . . 

Robert Armstrong
256,000 jobs or something like that . . . 

Katie Martin
I think it was 254. But anyway, that’s a lot of jobs and the unemployment rate came down to like 4.1. Just edged a little bit lower.

Robert Armstrong
Yup. And, you know, the jobs were spread around the economy — you know, it was leisure and hospitality, it was everything. So, you know, so it was a good report. And, you know, the markets really responded. And the funny thing is, before that report, everybody is like, well, there’s a secret slowdown in the economy that’s coming and what could even be a recession or whatever. There’s cracks in the edifice or, you know, a metaphor of your choice. And then we get this one report and it’s like it’s overheating. Inflation’s coming back, you know? And so it’s like we’re all over the road in terms of sentiment here.

Katie Martin
We are all over the road. And like, the thing is, though, it is quite a weird situation where you’ve got jobs numbers absolutely blasting through expectations. And it’s worth noting that July and August got revised up somewhat as well like straight after the Fed just cut benchmark interest rates by half a percentage point. And it’s like something is not right with this picture. But it also in terms of the market reaction that you just mentioned, like this is what investors are constantly saying to me, which is that the Fed is data-dependent, right? It doesn’t really have a plan. It’s responding to data points as and when they come in, which means that the market has to respond to data points as and when they come in.

Robert Armstrong
As and when they come in.

Katie Martin
Which means we’re all just getting like pinged around all over the place on every data release. And it’s exhausting, frankly.

Robert Armstrong
Yes, it is exhausting. But I think it’s the best you can do, right? What else is the Fed supposed to do except respond to the information that it has in front of it, right? I mean, I want them to take a slightly longer-term view and look at the average of several reports rather than making the mistake of getting too excited about one month. Being data-dependent is quite jarring at times, quite volatile at times. But the other option is just being an idiot, which is not as good, you know, so . . . (Laughter)

Katie Martin
Works for you.

Robert Armstrong
(Laughter) Well, I’ve done a lot of field research on being an idiot . . . 

Katie Martin
(Laughter) Some real shoe-leather reporting.

Robert Armstrong
And it’s been mixed outcomes so far, Katie. Let me just say there are . . . 

Katie Martin
(Inaudible) as you say. Yeah, go on.

Robert Armstrong
There are a couple of other things. No, I’m interrupting you, Katie. Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting you.

Katie Martin
No, go on, then. Go on.

Robert Armstrong
There are a couple of other things that are suggestive that the economy in the US and the world might be heading for faster growth. Not to say overheating, but let’s say faster growth. One thing is, at least until today, there was the first spark of excitement about the Chinese economy that we’ve had in a long time because the government said we are going to do things to make things better. And the stock market went bananas, which like affirmed this signal that maybe the Chinese government will do fiscal stimulus or something that will start this economy. So that got people excited.

And the commodities markets have followed. Copper has had a decent month though it hasn’t had a good week. Oil is up. That’s of course involving the war. But there is some sign of affirming kind of picture out there other than just one US jobs report.

Katie Martin
One of the things, though, that is really tricky to get your head around with the US is if you look at PMI surveys, right? So like kind of purchasing managers’ index surveys like where basically you go to like people who actually do real things for real companies for a living and say, how cheerful do you feel about the future?

Robert Armstrong
Do you have more orders this month than you had last month? What are your inventories? Stuff like this, yeah.

Katie Martin
Exactly. So if you look at like manufacturing PMIs are like (blows a raspberry).

Robert Armstrong
Yeah, terrible.

Katie Martin
Like, nasty; tells us like contraction is coming. It’s really horrible. Whereas services PMIs are like, woohoo, party time, you know. So we’ve got like services PMIs at like 55, manufacturing at 47.

Robert Armstrong
Yeah. And for our listeners, 50 means things are the same. Anything above 50, things are getting better. Anything below 50 means business is getting worse.

Katie Martin
It’s a little kind of arbitrary.

Robert Armstrong
So why is manufacturing getting worse? It does seem weird. Ever since the pandemic, we’ve had weird changes in goods demand, right? Because for a while, we were all locked in the house and we ordered so many goods — so many Pelotons, so many air fryers, so many, you know, because what could you do?

Katie Martin
I never got into this air fryer thing but tell me I should.

Robert Armstrong
Yeah. I don’t even know what it is. Yeah. People have them. You can’t fry with air, you know. It’s stupid. Anyway.

Katie Martin
This is a hill I’m prepared to die on.

Robert Armstrong
(Laughter) Anyway, and then it’s like, now you have all the stuff you need, right? So then, you know, you had too much goods demand and then not enough. And so I wonder if we’re still dealing with kind of waves of too high and then too low goods demand that is affecting manufacturers.

Katie Martin
So we’ve like bricked ourselves into our own homes with Pelotons and air fryers and other such nonsense.

Robert Armstrong
Yeah. And we’re still in the like, now let’s go do the things we couldn’t do phase four years later, like, you know. And also like maybe it’s just the United States is ever becoming more a service-driven economy. I mean, that’s the most obvious explanation.

Katie Martin
Yeah. It’s all about going out for dinner and going to bars and I don’t know, whatever it is you Americans do with your spare time.

Robert Armstrong
Yes. Though that’s about it.

Katie Martin
Go and watch American ball sports.

Robert Armstrong
Go to the mall, we go to the bar. OK. Let me throw another weird variable into the equation. If you ask Americans, how’s the economy, which the University of Michigan has done every month since the 1950s, Americans say it’s crap, which is partly weird and partly not. So if you look at the history of the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey and you superimpose over it inflation, inflation really makes people feel bad about the economy. And although inflation is gone in terms of price growth, we’ve had a big shift in the price level. Everybody’s pissed off. That’s normal. But in the past, when sentiment has been as bad as it is right now, we have not only had inflation, but we’ve had stagflation. We’ve had inflation tied closely or loosely to, you know, recession and job losses. And right now we have the opposite. So it’s like we don’t care. We’re so pissed off about inflation. We don’t care about how strong growth is or how many people are employed. We’re still pissed off, right?

Katie Martin
But even though people are like pissed off about inflation, which I get, the evidence is that Americans are still spending, right? Household consumption is like back to pre-Covid trends for the US where it’s not in the UK . . . 

Robert Armstrong
100 per cent. Saw it at the mall.

Katie Martin
It’s not in the UK. It’s not in Europe. So I just don’t understand what is with this like weird thing with Americans at the moment where they’re like, everything’s going great, the economy is absolutely like roaring and people are determined to be cross about it.

Robert Armstrong
They’re cross but, you know, when we are feeling bad as Americans, you know, we go shopping to console ourselves. I think that’s as simple as that. Like, you know, if a humongous flat screen TV isn’t gonna make you feel better, you know what is? But no, I mean, I joke and this is a cliché, Americans are just consumers, blah, blah, blah. But it is striking that Americans are shopping like they are happy or consuming like they are happy. But when asked whether they’re happy, they say no. And of course, this will be important in the upcoming election.

Katie Martin
Are you happy, Rob? We want you to be happy.

Robert Armstrong
I’ve never been happier. I’m feeling great. I feel great.

Katie Martin
(Laughter) But so what are markets supposed to do with all that? So since we had those like super soaraway jobs numbers a few days ago, some of those rate cut expectations have come off a little bit so the market is saying, OK, maybe we don’t need quite so many rate cuts because maybe we should cheer the heck up.

Robert Armstrong
And actually, there has been a big change in the two-year Treasury yield. And as you know, Katie, but our listeners may not, any time you say the phrase two-year Treasury yield, you have to append the phrase “Fed policy-sensitive” to your yield.

Katie Martin
Policy-sensitive two-year.

Robert Armstrong
Yeah. Then it just comes as one phrase. So, you know, the two-year yield tells you what the market is thinking about what Fed policy is gonna be. And the two-year yield has gone way up. Last time I looked, it was a hair under four. It had been at like three-six or three-five. And so what that’s telling you is people saw this jobs report and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we may not get all these rate cuts we thought we were gonna get, right? Maybe the Fed doesn’t have that much room to cut because if they cut much more than they already have after they went and did 50 last month, 50 basis points, they’re gonna get an inflation surprise, right? So they’re gonna find out. They’re like, oh yeah, we’re going back to three or whatever they predict is the long-term rate. They might not get all the way down to three. Something bad might happen on the way, specifically a bad inflation thing.

Katie Martin
So we’ve got a situation where stocks are doing well because rates are gonna fall, but rates probably aren’t gonna fall quite so much.

Robert Armstrong
Yes. That’s what the two-year is telling you.

Katie Martin
So, I mean, I can’t square the circle. I really can’t. Someone’s wrong somewhere. It’s probably me.

Robert Armstrong
No, someone is wrong. Probably us, someone on the internet. Someone somewhere is wrong. I mean, the thing that is unsettling about this is that stocks are just sort of bouncing along at all-time highs. And you sort of wonder if we were wrong to expect as many rate cuts as we did. If we are wrong to think that inflation was gonna come down as easily as we thought it was, surely something about the valuation of stocks has to change. But every time I say sentences like the one I just said, stocks laugh in my face and proceed to go higher. So because you would that . . . 

Katie Martin
I’m not sure we’re helping people much here, Rob. (Laughter)

Robert Armstrong
And I think part of it is, you know, we’re starting earnings season, Katie, so we’re gonna find out. We have the banks this week. We’re gonna start finding out whether stocks can perform well enough in terms of earnings that the stock market can stay high.

Katie Martin
Show me the money, corporate America. That’s what I say. I mean, is this . . . How normal is it for consumer sentiment to just like split away so much from actual spending?

Robert Armstrong
Let’s talk about it in terms of unemployment, which is kind of a tidier number than consumer spending. If you look at a long-term chart of consumer sentiment against the unemployment rate, the lines go generally, historically in the opposite directions. Low unemployment, high consumer sentiment.

Katie Martin
That makes sense.

Robert Armstrong
Right? And that is a pretty consistent pattern through history, as you might expect. The first step to being happy in a capitalist economy is having a job. Since the pandemic, almost uniquely right now, we’re experiencing a moment where we have historically low unemployment and sentiment is still lousy. It’s new. And I don’t know. Maybe that’s normal five years after a big pandemic. Maybe we’re still getting over the sting of inflation and things will normalise soon. But this combination of a very low unemployment rate and . . . I should say that consumer sentiment is getting better. It’s not as bad as it was in 2022 when it was like the worst it’s ever been. But it’s still quite low and it’s not trending better very quickly. This is a strange combination historically, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I have no tidy explanation for it.

Katie Martin
You have to come up with one. You know, that’s your homework for next week.

Robert Armstrong
OK, next week I’ll have a grand unified theory of consumer sentiment and unemployment prepared for you.

Katie Martin
I look forward to that. You can start thinking about that now. We’re gonna be back in a sec. But first, while we’ve got you, listeners. We’re very excited to have been nominated for a Signal award. Rob Armstrong, did you hear that?

Robert Armstrong
I am delighted but not surprised. I think we deserve to get a pile of awards that’s 10ft tall.

Katie Martin
Well, look, if this is your favourite finance pod — listeners, I’m sure it is — then there’s a link in the show notes. Check it out. Click the button. Vote for us. We’d be very grateful.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We’re gonna be back in a sec with Long/Short.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Katie Martin
Okey-doke. It is time for Long/Short, that part of the show where we go long a thing we love, short a thing we hate. Rob, what you got — long or short?

Robert Armstrong
I am short Spirit Halloween. Now you, Katie, as a person from a strange island in the middle of the North Atlantic will not know what Spirit Halloween is. But Americans will know. Spirit Halloween is a store that shows up only at this time of year. If you need your affordable pizza rat costume, New Yorkers will know what that one is. You can grab it at Spirit Halloween.

And I’m not short this business. I have no idea whether it’s a good business or a bad business, how much money it makes. But I am short any place this spooky store shows up. Because if there is a space in your neighbourhood for a Spirit Halloween, it means there is vacant stores and the rent is cheap and you know, at the last minute Spirit Halloween can just rock up and say, I’d like your building for a month or whatever.

So the weird thing is, this spooky store actually is an economically spooky event when it appears. So the big spooky Grim Reaper motto guy who’s on the sign in front is actually an economic Grim Reaper in reality.

Katie Martin
On a similar note, I am long monsters.

Robert Armstrong
Great!

Katie Martin
So as you mentioned earlier, Chinese stocks had a bit of . . . They’ve had a bad day because like the second round of information coming out of like authorities in Beijing around what the stimulus . . . 

Robert Armstrong
Yes. The previous announcement in which we said we were going to save the world was not true.

Katie Martin
Yeah. Well, so the markets initially went crazy like that, just felt like stocks absolutely shot higher. Today we were supposed to get like more information around what the authorities were gonna do. Markets didn’t particularly like the look of that. It wasn’t detailed enough. So like some of the stocks in like China and Hong Kong fell really hard. The reason I bring up monsters is because we had a quote in our story about this from one Alicia García-Herrero from Natixis who said, and I quote, “This is what happens when you feed the monster. Every day you need to increase the amount of food or it turns against you”. And I thought that was quite apt. So I’m long monsters.

Robert Armstrong
I have twin 16-year-olds and I endorse that phrase.

Katie Martin
(Laughter) The thing with children is you need to feed them.

Robert Armstrong
Constantly. Every time it’s more, you know.

Katie Martin
Yeah. They’re a real drain. Anyway, on that on that cheerful note, let’s wrap up. We, listeners, will be back in your feed on Thursday because it’s Tuesday today, yes? So it’ll be Thursday. So listen up then . . .

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Robert Armstrong
Yes. By which time the economic narrative will have changed completely. So we’ll have plenty to talk about.

Katie Martin
Either Rob will have figured it out or it will all have changed again and then we don’t need to bother. So for that sort of insight and more, tune in again on Thursday. We’ll see you then.

Unhedged is produced by Jake Harper and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. We had additional help from Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Special thanks to Laura Clarke, Alastair Mackie, Gretta Cohn and Natalie Sadler.

FT premium subscribers can get the Unhedged newsletter for free. A 30-day free trial is available to everyone else. Just go to ft.com/unhedgedoffer.

I’m Katie Martin. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In her guest column “America must act to avoid Eurosclerosis” (Opinion, October 4) Suzanne Clark, the president and chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, implores US policymakers to heed the warnings coming from Europe and consider the adverse impact that overregulation can have on America’s economic growth and competitiveness.

In that regard, there is a looming contagion that must also be addressed — extraterritorial regulation — which will lead to unintended and adverse consequences.

On September 26, in a bicameral US congressional effort, a letter signed by more than 60 Republican members of Congress urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to seek a delay of the implementation of the EU rule, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

This will place substantial legal obligations on US multinationals operating in the EU by converting various UN provisions and other international human rights and environmental, climate and labour law conventions into binding law.

Thus, for many US multinationals doing business in the EU, CSDDD as constituted will require a range of compliance to include reporting across not only their EU operations, but also their global operations, as well as all the companies in their supply chains.

The strategic implications of this directive driven by extraterritorial regulation is profound. Faced with this directive and others, multinationals will incur the burden of adhering to multiple overlapping directives and laws across global jurisdictions. The directives will expose these companies to increased worldwide legal liability risks, as they become accountable not only for their own practices, but also for those of their suppliers and business partners across the world.

As multinationals and their global suppliers work to meet a wide range of regulatory requirements, the risk of operational disruptions and delays will increase. At worst, investment will be stalled along with capital formation, with unintended and negative consequences for economic growth and competitiveness.

Every effort must be made to avoid the unnecessary regulatory reach and unintended consequences of extraterritorial provisions.

This can be done while still supporting the inherent sustainability and human rights goals that the directives seek to achieve, but which can only be attained if supported by growing economies and strong alliances.

Mike Roman
Senior Fellow, American Council for Capital Formation, Washington, DC, US