It’s always good to see a new broom live up to the proverbial tag. Xavier Rolet, the relative newbie at the London Stock Exchange, is setting about what may be the LSE’s biggest challenge: upgrading the trading platform.

He will meet a lot of resistance, if the past is anything to go by. Two of his predecessors fell from grace for fiddling with the systems.

Clara Furse, the recently departed Chief Executive, spent almost her entire period in office sandbagging the exchange against marauders.

Rolet seems determined to make a name for himself by directly improving the quality of the product and its efficiency. The platform must be swept clean.

The current model is difficult to update because the software was not created in-house, but farmed out to commercial developers. The slowness of this process is seriously harming the echange vis a vis the horde of new competitors produced by EU laws.

Technology being what it is, especially big computer projects, there is always the chance that you end up with a gigantic white elephant. Think NHS computer, or any number of pieces of kit ordered by the present Government.

The key appears to be the link with Borsa Italiana, which holds some aces in its pack.

It will be interesting to watch how Rolet handles this move and, of course, the ultimate outcome.

Economic forecasters are now turning away from the much-hyped V-shaped recovery pattern, and even a more leisurely U-shape, to a wobbly “W”, or double-dip delayed type of recovery for the UK economy.

The recently pushed swift bounce back is looking increasingly lame.

New figures clearly show that the economy shrank by 2.4pc in the first quarter of this year. This is a revised number down from the 1.9pc previously reported.

It illustrates that the UK is in a much worse downturn than many expected and so-called green shoots of recovery are isolated statistical blips.

It’s clear the British economy is still in freefall. As in the 1980s, the biggest decline has been in manufacturing. While the public sector has continued to grow, the makers of things have taken blow after blow.

The weakest sectors have been new housebuilding and car making.

This is beginning to look very serious indeed for UK industry and any company in the private sector.