In the centre of London, from inside a boardroom that looks across several of the city's icons such as Trafalgar Square, Admiralty Arch and, beyond, The Mall and Buckingham Palace, Sir Michael Hintze reflects on the horrific terrorist attacks that have unfurled across Britain this year. In May, Salman Abedi had joined the crowd of mostly teenage girls leaving an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester before detonating a suicide vest and killing 22 people. Two months earlier, another British Islamist, Khalid Masood, took the lives of five people by driving a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and then stabbing a police officer outside the Houses of Parliament.

Such events are "an abomination that will make our lives much worse", says Hintze, who admits he cried while watching footage of the Manchester victims. "But they will not take our economy down."