Britain sends investors fleeing with historic tax cuts and borrowing

Pound slides below $1.11 for first time in 37 years

Britain’s new finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed historic tax cuts and huge increases in borrowing on Friday in an economic agenda that floored financial markets, with sterling and British government bonds in freefall.

Kwarteng scrapped the country’s top rate of income tax, cancelled a planned rise in corporate taxes and for the first time put a price tag on the spending plans of Prime Minister Liz Truss, who wants to double Britain's rate of economic growth.

Investors unloaded short-dated British government bonds as fast as they could, with the cost of borrowing over 5 years seeing its biggest one-day rise since 1991,