Comment: The Boris bounce was never real, but who cares in the new era?

So much for the Boris bounce.

t’s become one of those phrases, like “Brexit”, which hail from another era.

Coronavirus has created a new economic reality, so quickly, that the old one has been all but forgotten.

Little wonder you hear CEOs and bankers talking these days of “BC” — Before Covid.

Today’s GDP numbers for February a re so BC, they will not even warrant a footnote in the retelling of this crisis, even though they show the supposed bounce triggered by Boris’s election win was an illusion.

With the poor chap now in intensive care, it’s irrelevant.

Similarly, all that BC talk of private equity funds preparing for a mega 2020 of takeovers.

While the stock market wipeout has created bargains aplenty, M&A is dead.

Private equity firms with the money to spend are so busy nursing their existing companies in their portfolios that they don’t have the time or energy to hunt for deals.

The same goes for the lenders who provide the finance PE houses use to fund their takeovers. Pretty much all of their loans are in crisis and requiring intensive surgery.

Given all that, it is entirely reasonable for Unilever to turn the kettle off on its tea division sale.

Even a PG Tips chimp can see the logic.

::Gearing the machine

The machinery behind the Treasury’s fundraising efforts to pay for its Covid-19 aid schemes is running smoothly. Demand for our gilts is high and we will easily borrow the £300 billion required.

But as anyone with a credit card knows, running up debts is the easy part. The next bit is trickier. Who is going to repay it, and how?