The past 12 months have been a turbulent time, economically and politically, both at an international and UK level. Consumers and businesses have had to deal with levels of inflation not seen since the early 1980s.
This has triggered demands from public sector workers for wage increases to keep pace with their daily cost of living, and government subsidies to help people with suddenly astronomically high energy bills.
Meanwhile, large parts of western Europe have had to rapidly re-engineer their energy policies, to disentangle themselves from Vladimir Putin's Russia.
While inflation and supply chain issues had been steadily increasing over the past 18 months, as the world came out of the pandemic, events accelerated over the past year, and suddenly many people found themselves under pressure.
Where does this place investors for the coming year? Fund managers expect there to be greater spending by governments and companies, in energy by the former and automation by the latter. There is also likely to be more activity in corporate acquisitions.
This report looks at some of these themes and underlying trends as we go into 2023.
