All eyes were on the newly installed chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as he prepares to unveil his "mini Budget" on September 23.
But his disastrous plans to slash taxes and put the squeeze on benefits receivers plunged the UK economy into chaos, melted the markets and forced the Bank of England to intervene to steady the ship.
A long-time ally of the new PM Liz Truss, Mr Kwarteng appeared to be a shoo-in for the job once it was clear she would leave her leadership rival Rishi Sunak trailing in her wake.
The pair share similar right-wing views, co-authoring a book with several top Tories which branded Brits as the world's "worst idlers".
On October 14 - just 38 days into the job - Mr Kwarteng was humiliatingly sacked by Ms Truss as she was forced to perform another U-turn on the disastrous mini Budget.
But who is the now ex-Treasury chief, who held the purse strings at a time of rising prices, falling living standards and a looming recession for just over a month?
The only child of Ghanaian parents who arrived as students in the 1970s, Kwasi Kwarteng grew up in Waltham Forest, in east London.
The future Tory bigwig started out at a state primary before being sent to fee-paying prep school Colet Court when he was eight years-old.
He won a scholarship to Eton, and later studied classics and history at Cambridge University, a path well-travelled by prominent Conservatives.
After his entrance interview, a self confident Kwarteng reportedly reassured the young tutor who was new to the job of grilling candidates, saying: "Oh, don't worry, sir, you did fine."
He was part of the 1995 winning team on University Challenge when he was 20, but ended up appearing in The Sun under the headline "Rudiversity Challenge", after replying, "Oh f***", when he stumbled over an answer.
Before heading to the City to work as a financial analyst, he went back to Cambridge to do a PhD, with his doctoral thesis examining " political thought of the recoinage crisis of 1695-7".
He lived with former Labour MP Tristram Hunt during this second stint, who joked that his roommate was "quite ungovernable and dishevelled".
After a failed campaign in 2005, Mr Kwarteng was elected in the 2010 intake, alongside his new boss Liz Truss to represent Spelthorne in Surrey - which he held with an 18,000 majority in 2019.
Mr Kwarteng has written several books, including the now infamous 'Britannia Unchained', alongside Ms Truss and ex-ministers Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Priti Patel.
The book argued that British workers are "among the worst idlers in the world", too many people in the country "prefer a lie-in to hard work", and that the government must stop "rewarding laziness".
His other publications include War on Gold, Thatcher's Trial, and the Ghosts of Empire - a book which examines Britain's legacies in the modern world.
Unlike the other authors of Britannia Unchained, Mr Kwarteng only began to rise through the ranks in 2018 as a Brexit minister in Theresa May's government.
Boris Johnson promoted him to be Business Secretary in 2021 - becoming the first black MP to serve as a Secretary of State.
The 47-year-old was often sent out to defend Mr Johnson's crisis-hit administration on the airwaves as the government lurched from scandal after scandal.
But this loyalty came at a cost, when he was forced to apologise for questioning the position of Parliament's sleaze investigator during a TV grilling over Boris Johnson's botched handling of the Owen Paterson scandal.
Standing 6ft 5in tall, with a distinctive booming voice, Mr Kwarteng is regarded as confident and outspoken about his politics.
But he keeps his personal life private - despite once dating Tory former Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
He married his wife Harriet, a City lawyer, in 2019 and the pair have a young daughter.
Until his promotion to the second most powerful job in Government, his family lived on the same London street in Greenwich as his new neighbour in Downing Street - Prime Minister Liz Truss.
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