Shortest ever pre-budget report

Spread-betting firms which took wagers on the length of Gordon Brown’s speech today are licking their wounds after it turned out to be his shortest ever pre-budget report.

Cantor Index offered punters the chance to bet on whether the speech would be longer than 45 minutes or shorter than 42 minutes.

It came in at just 37 minutes, netting some tidy pre-Christmas windfalls for all of those who correctly predicted the chancellor would have little to say.

“Some quite shrewd people around thought that there wouldn’t be much content he would read out,” said Cantor’s David Buik.

“A lot of people just used their intelligence and thought ‘now, he’s going to say enough but not too much’,” he added, confirming Cantor will be paying out £4,700 as a result.

Tags: spread betting

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 4:07 am and is filed under Industry News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.