By: Ali Lyon

Chief reporter Ali Lyon is the chief reporter at City AM, responsible for covering the full gamut of business, finance and wealth news. He has been at City AM full-time since July 2024. Get in touch with tips via email: ali.lyon@cityam.com. Follow Ali on X: @alilyon_94

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UK’s first high-speed railway HS1 faced cancellation months before Channel Tunnel opening

Transport and infrastructure

Ministers considered abandoning the High Speed 1 (HS1), the UK’s first high-speed railway that links London to the Channel Tunnel amid financial struggles just months before the cross-channel line was opened by Queen Elizabeth II, City AM can reveal. According to correspondence released by the National Archives, transport minister John MacGregor listed axing the high-speed [...]
Elizabeth Line branded a ‘folie de grandeur’ in Treasury campaign against Crossrail

Transport and infrastructure

Tory Chancellor Kenneth Clarke warned that initial plans for the Elizabeth Line were a “folie de grandeur” that taxpayers would be unwilling to foot the bill, during a protracted rearguard action against the megaproject by the Treasury in the 1990s, City AM can reveal. According to a fraught set of ministerial correspondence released to the [...]
Dyson will ‘stop being Dyson’ without inheritance tax U-turn

Business

The government’s controversial plans to apply inheritance tax on family businesses would leave Dyson “unrecognisable” after its eponymous founder’s death and force his family to sell off part or all of the business, the entrepreneur has said. Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir James Dyson warned the consumer electronics giant will be unable to [...]

The London IPOs to look out for in 2026

December 26, 2025

The year 2025 will not, it is safe to say, go down in history as a blockbuster one for London IPOs. Over its first nine months, the UK capital’s bourse was even languishing below its of Omani and Mexican counterparts when it came to capital raised at market debuts. We can take some consolation from [...]
Will the AI bubble burst in 2026? We ask the experts

December 22, 2025

The question of whether we are in an AI bubble and, if so, when exactly it might burst has dominated conversation in the City in recent months. Who better to turn to for answers than some of the UK’s finest stockpickers and strategists? The year 2025 was not a quiet one for markets. It started [...]
Crane drain: Construction falls to 10-year low

December 22, 2025

Commercial property development in the UK has plunged to its lowest level in over a decade, as tighter monetary conditions and sparse demand continue to weigh on construction. According to a fresh analysis from Costar, just 68m square feet of offices, industrial and retail sites was being developed at the end of September, a 16 [...]
Hospitality business rates set to nearly double by 2028 despite government tax cut claims

December 20, 2025

Hospitality venues across England will see their business rates bill nearly double in the next three years as a result of the government’s controversial overhaul of the commercial property tax. A fresh analysis of government figures found that most pubs, restaurants and hotels will pay over £32,000 more on property tax by 2028, despite ministers [...]
Heathrow ‘under pressure’ amid rising costs

December 19, 2025

Heathrow Airport has warned that rising employment costs and the government’s controversial business rates overhaul will wipe out the additional revenues generated from a record number of passengers passing through the west London hub. In an update to bondholders, the UK’s largest airport revealed its profit had plummeted by 38 per cent in the nine [...]
Bank of England cuts interest rates to near three-year low

December 18, 2025

The Bank of England has delivered a pre-Christmas rate cut, reducing its central interest rate to 3.75 per cent amid a deteriorating labour market and signs price rises will continue to slow into the new year. In a close 5-4 vote that was decided by Andrew Bailey, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) chose to reduce [...]
Britain is ‘too pessimistic’ to succeed

December 18, 2025

Britain is in the grips of an overly pessimistic mindset that is preventing it from taking the risks and making the reforms needed to reawaken its economy, the former chair of Deutsche Bank has said. Dr Paul Achleitner said that while structural issues were largely behind the paucity of growth across Europe and the UK, [...]

The Magnificent 7 in 2025 – and the survival of the richest

Reading owner Rob Couhig considers selling training ground to raise funds

Food trends 2026: What Londoners will eat in the new year

By: Ali Lyon

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