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The UK financial watchdog has announced it is investigating a claims management company that promised to recover thousands of pounds for victims of alleged car finance mis-selling in adverts featuring heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury.

The Financial Conduct Authority said on Friday it had opened its enforcement probe into The Claims Protection Agency Limited over “concerns about its advertising and sales tactics”.

The watchdog made the announcement after overturning a legal challenge by the company against the FCA’s recently enhanced powers to “name and shame” the targets of its investigations.

It is the first time the regulator has publicly announced an investigation into one of the many claims management companies that have seized on the controversy over alleged mis-selling of car finance to bring millions of claims on behalf of consumers.

The Claims Protection Agency — which used several trading names, including My Claim Group, Martin’s Tips, Karen’s Claims, Express PCP and The PCP Guys — advertised heavily, offering to pursue car finance compensation cases.

Fury, a former world heavyweight champion boxer, became the “ambassador” for My Claim Group, saying in a video ad on Facebook that he was fighting “to claim back what is rightfully ours” and stating people “could be owed up to £4,000 in compensation”. My Claim Group did not respond to a request for comment.

The FCA said it was “investigating what customers were told about the amount of redress they might obtain, whether they were told they could make a claim for free and whether they were pressurised to sign up”. 

The watchdog, which is setting up an industry-wide scheme for lenders to handle claims from car finance customers for free, is worried people will lose out with claims management companies that can charge fees of up to 30 per cent of any compensation awarded.

Its decision to announce the investigation into The Claims Protection Agency would allow its customers “to consider their options”, the FCA said, adding that it had “not reached any conclusions” on whether the company had breached regulatory requirements.

The watchdog has estimated its redress scheme will pay about £700 per claim on average, leading to overall payouts worth a total of about £8.2bn. 

The FCA wrote to The Claims Protection Agency, raising concerns about its adverts and sales tactics in August 2025, prompting the company to stop accepting new customers or publishing any new financial promotions and to remove all existing financial promotions.

When the watchdog subsequently informed the claims manager of its plans to publicly announce an investigation, it challenged the decision via a judicial review in the High Court. 

Mr Justice Fordham rejected the challenge, saying that identifying the company would “most effectively get through to the claimant’s customers with a message that they needed to receive from the regulator”.

The FCA last year sought to introduce a public interest test that would allow it to publicly name more companies it investigates. But after this stirred controversy, the watchdog abandoned much of the plan, sticking to its “exceptional circumstances” test of when to disclose which companies it is probing.

The watchdog gave itself the ability to make anonymised announcements that identify the sector and concerns but not the company being investigated, as well as naming unregulated companies it investigates and probes that are already disclosed elsewhere.

Elon Musk once laughed off Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD (Build Your Dreams), scoffing in 2011, “Have you seen their car?” That mockery turned into a rude shock on Friday, as BYD dethroned Tesla to become the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles (EVs) on a calendar-year basis.

In a statement released Thursday, BYD reported that sales of its battery-powered vehicles rose nearly 28% to 2.26 million units in 2025. Tesla, on the other hand, delivered 1.64 million vehicles during the same period, marking around 8% drop from 2024 and its second consecutive annual decline. Fourth-quarter deliveries for Tesla fell about 16% compared with the same quarter in 2024, when the company reported 495,570 vehicles.

Musk had openly dismissed BYD in an October 2011 interview with Bloomberg TV, stating, “I don’t think they have a great product,” and adding that he did not consider BYD a competitor. Since then, BYD has experienced a spectacular rise, resulting in Friday’s historic shift in the global EV market.

Tesla endured a turbulent 2025, with shares collapsing in the first quarter amid stiff competition, particularly from Chinese EV makers, and reputational challenges tied to Musk’s political statements, according to ABC News.

Analysts had expected Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries to slow less, predicting around 449,000 vehicles, but the elimination of the $7,500 US EV tax credit at the end of September 2025 contributed to the slowdown. In addition to economic factors, Tesla faced political headwinds, with sales struggling in key markets due to Musk’s public support for President Donald Trump and other far-right figures.

Known in Chinese as “Biyadi” — which translates to “Build Your Dreams” in English — the company was originally founded in 1995 as a battery manufacturer. It has since grown into a leading player in China’s highly competitive new energy vehicle market, producing both fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. With China being the world’s largest EV market, BYD has leveraged its affordable, high-volume models to capture significant market share.

While facing hefty tariffs in the United States, BYD is expanding overseas, gaining traction in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. In 2025, the company exported over 1 million vehicles, a 150% increase from the previous year. December alone saw a record 133,000 units shipped abroad, with production soon set to begin in new plants in Brazil and Hungary to bypass trade barriers and strengthen its global presence.

The 2025 leadership shift reflects two contrasting trajectories. Tesla’s deliveries fell due to aging models, political challenges, and the EV tax credit phase-out, while BYD surged nearly 30% by targeting entry-level, high-volume segments that Tesla has yet to penetrate. Analysts note that BYD’s vertical integration — producing its own batteries and semiconductors — creates a scale advantage that protects margins as competitors struggle.

Despite record sales, analysts say BYD could face potential challenges in 2026 due to a Chinese policy shift. Fixed rebates have been replaced with a percentage-based system, requiring vehicles to cost at least 166,700 yuan to receive the maximum 20,000 yuan subsidy. A new 5% purchase tax may further impact demand for budget models like the Seagull, although analysts believe BYD’s premium sub-brands are well-positioned to capture consumers moving upmarket.

Tesla narrowly beat BYD in 2024, with 1.79 million units sold versus BYD’s 1.76 million, but 2025 marks the first time BYD has outproduced the American EV giant.

Despite Tesla shares dipping 0.5% in early New York trading on Friday, analysts at Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities Inc, a leading American financial services firm, noted that its quarterly sales exceeded some expectations, while highlighting ongoing challenges in Europe and other key markets.

With its affordable models, efficient manufacturing, and growing international footprint, BYD is now positioned to reshape the global EV landscape, signaling a historic shift in the balance of power between Chinese and American automakers.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is a financial journalist and author of ‘The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump’

It is a mug’s game trying to predict the end of a boom with any precision. They last much longer than anyone might reasonably expect. That is true of bull markets, as well as economic advances. The reason is that markets and economies find ways to support themselves. George Soros, the well-known investor and philanthropist, has a term for it: reflexivity.

In a Financial Times article back in October 2009, Soros defined the concept, in terms of its impact on markets, quite succinctly. “The participants’ views influence the course of events, and the course of events influences the participants’ views,” he wrote.

It is a positive feedback loop. The same idea was at the heart of what John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, described as “animal spirits”; if businesses are confident, they will invest money and hire more workers, and this investment will boost economic growth.

In terms of asset markets, the most obvious example of reflexivity comes from the link between banking and property prices. Initially, for whatever reason, banks start lending more money to people who are buying property. The availability of additional finance pushes up demand for property — whether it is office blocks or homes — and property prices rise. This makes the bankers more confident about lending money in the property sector, as their collateral is rising in value. And it makes investors and or speculators more willing to borrow money to buy property, since it looks like a very good bet.

Debt does not have to be involved. For much of the life of cryptocurrencies, the price of digital assets such as bitcoin and ethereum has been sustained by the belief, among some investors, that they represent the wave of the future. Any weakness is thus a buying opportunity. And a rising price is a wonderful way of proselytising the crypto religion; more people are tempted to adopt the faith.

Another way in which booms can sustain themselves, in both economic and asset-market terms, is through spending on goods and services. That is clearly the case at the moment with the rush to invest in artificial intelligence.

This spending has done a lot to prop up US economic growth, at a time when job creation has stalled and consumer confidence has declined. In the first half of the year, JPMorgan estimated that AI spending contributed 1.1 percentage points to US GDP growth. In market terms, it plays a crucial role in convincing investors of the solidity of the AI boom, not least in the demand it creates for the chips made by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company.

The buzz surrounding this spending also creates a kind of Fomo (fear of missing out) among other executives. If AI is the wave of the future, then any company that doesn’t embrace it risks being left behind. And, true to the principle of reflexivity, the race to invest makes the AI boom seem all the more substantial to investors. The obvious parallel is the late 1990s when spending on fibreoptic cable, routers and telecoms equipment soared, spurring the dotcom bubble.

The intoxicating nature of bullish sentiment indicates how these booms may eventually sow the seeds of their own destruction. In the late 1990s, it seemed that every twenty-something was either launching their own website or joining a start-up internet company with the hope of cashing in their share options. The appeal of the technology was so obvious that too many businesses were founded; only a fraction of them would ever be profitable. When it became clear, in the spring of 2000, that some businesses were running out of cash, sentiment changed. 

The AI boom is different as it is focused on a few big players with strong existing business models, rather than on a host of start-ups. This means that the financial pressures are unlikely to bite as quickly.

On the other hand, AI might not be as immediately useful as many executives hope; a McKinsey study found that 80 per cent of companies that had started to use AI had yet to experience any boost to their profits. Plenty of consumers — particularly students — are enthusiastic users of AI to summarise reports and generate business proposals or essay plans. Useful stuff, but hardly the basis of a productivity miracle.

Of course, in the past, the impact of innovations such as electrification has taken decades to show up in the productivity numbers. By that stage, however, history suggests that a market boom, even if powered by reflexivity, will be long over. At some point, the growth rate in AI spending — and in Nvidia’s revenues — will slow; and then the rating that investors are willing to apply to corporate earnings will decline, along with share prices. The bandwagon will develop a wonky wheel. 

Arguing that a boom must come to an end is not the same as saying the underlying technology is rubbish. AI will be useful, just as the internet is useful and the railways were very useful. That didn’t stop the other two booms from experiencing crashes. A reflex action may prolong a boom but it can also deliver a painful kick.

This article has been amended to correct the statement on JPMorgan’s forecast of the contribution of AI investment to US GDP growth

Czech GDP growth was confirmed at 0.8% quarter-on-quarter and 2.8% year-on-year in the final estimate. Real household income added 0.3% YoY in third quarter 2025, while annual household consumption per capita grew at a faster pace of 2.8%. Such twofold dynamics fostered the trend of the savings rate softening to levels observed in the pre-pandemic years. The household savings rate was 18.4% in third quarter 2025, which is 0.1ppt lower than the previous quarter and 1.9ppt lower than a year ago. Total wage costs of non-financial corporations increased by 7.3% YoY in 3Q25.

The investment rate increased by 0.3ppt QoQ and reached 26.8% in third quarter 2025, yet it was 1.1ppt weaker than in the previous year. The profit rate was 43.5% in 3Q25, down 0.1ppt QoQ and 0.3ppt from the previous year. The reading confirmed the good shape of the Czech economy, with fixed investment expanding 0.6% QoQ and 1.7% YoY. The punchy investment figure offers some hope that the Czech industrial base might not be in such a dismal state as suggested by the recent downbeat confidence indicator, with the caveat that the national accounts statistics measure is for the third quarter, but confidence tends to be more forward-looking.