Global Scans · UK · Weekly Summary

WHAT'S NEXT?: Achieving Brexit will dominate the UK's agenda up to and beyond 2020 with uncertainty rife until clear decisions are made on the form of Great Britain's future relationship with the EU and the rest of the world.

• [New] Soil health innovation more broadly will accelerate, particularly as Europe and the UK show increased openness toward gene editing in plants. agtechnavigator.com
• [New] The FPC has lowered its recommended system-wide Tier 1 capital benchmark for UK banks from around 14% to 13% of risk-weighted assets, translating to a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of about 11%. Addleshaw Goddard
• [New] In the long term, the British economy is expected to shrink by around 4% due to Brexit alone. Cross-Border Newsletter
• [New] In a large UK study, statin use was linked to fewer deaths and major cardiac events across all risk levels. ScienceDaily
• [New] The UK risks being shut out of a historic oceans summit because parliament has failed to ratify the UN's high seas treaty, environmental charities and campaigners have warned. The Guardian
• [New] In the UK, 84% of people are concerned ministers will prioritise tech company partnerships over the public interest when it comes to AI regulation. The Guardian
• [New] England faces a shortfall in public water supplies of nearly five billion liters per day by 2055, and a further one billion liters a day shortfall in the wider economy. Mirage News
• [New] The UK aims to capture and store 20 to 30 Megatonnes of CO2 and produce 10 Gigawatts of low-carbon hydrogen annually by 2030. Mirage News
• [New] Long phone queues, repeated form-filling, and endless paperwork will be cut out as technology is put to work to transform public services, modernise government, and accelerate national renewal across the UK. GOV.UK
• [New] In October the Bank of England warned of the risk of a sharp correction in US and UK markets due to giddy valuations of AI-linked tech companies. The Guardian
• [New] £192 million in GVA (gross value added) could be generated through operations in South Wales alone, comprising £161 million from DRIFT's direct investment and £31 million from associated shipyard expansion. BATH NEWSEUM
• [New] By 2032, DRIFT Energy could deliver substantial economic benefits for the UK. BATH NEWSEUM
• [New] UK CPI: Prices in December are expected to increase to 3.3% Y/Y, with the M/M figure at 0.4%. investing.com
• [New] 77% of Americans believed AI could pose a threat to humanity, while a UK poll reported 38% of respondents said a lack of trust around AI content as well as data privacy and ethical concerns was a barrier to adoption. The MBS Group
• [New] There are around 9.9m diesel cars on UK roads - a figure that's set to crash to under 250,000 by 2035. Positive News
• [New] The UK has pledged to return 30% of land to nature by 2030, and it's not happening fast enough. Positive News
• [New] The UK government is bringing into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, and regulator Ofcom is still probing whether X broke existing UK laws. BBC News
• [New] Under the proposed regime, only benchmarks or benchmark administrators posing systemic risks to UK financial markets would be regulated, reducing the number of regulated administrators by approximately 80 to 90%. Ashurst
• [New] The UK will follow suit - by the end of 2026, over 10% of the working age population in London will have paid for something via biometric method. The Form Playbook
• [New] UK-based AI infrastructure firm Nscale will invest $865 million for a 10-year, 40 MW colocation agreement with WhiteFiber's NC-1 data center complex in Madison, North Carolina. DataCenterKnowledge

Last updated: 20 January 2026