Britain plunges into first recession since '91 Fourth-quarter GDP decline steepest since 1980

Gross domestic product shrank by 1.5% in the final three months of the year, following a 0.6% quarterly contraction in the July-to-September period, the office for national statistics said in its initial estimate. That was the steepest quarterly drop since 1980, and also met the widely-used definition of a recession of two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.