With investors now barred from withdrawing their money from half of the UK property fund sector and sterling hitting a fresh 31-year low, it was surprising to hear someone talk positively about the economic benefits of Brexit. That the comments came from a government minister made it even more striking.

Mark Price has kept a low profile since switching from Waitrose to Whitehall three months ago. But the man who was affectionately known as the “chubby grocer” while he ran Britain’s biggest upmarket supermarket chain has a crucial role in the post-referendum world – as minister for trade and investment, Lord Price will be at the centre of negotiations about new trade deals.

When Price was hired by David Cameron in February it was not immediately clear why a man who ran a company with all its stores in the UK was suited to the role of trade minister. Price’s response was that grocery retailing revolves around the deals that supermarkets do with their suppliers, so actually he was ideal for the job.

We are about to find out whether that is the case, although a respected business leader such as Price is surely better placed to lead complex commercial negotiations than a career politician.

However, Price is already delivering on the other part of his job, which is to travel the world promoting British exports and reassuring overseas investors that the country is an attractive place to build factories or do deals.

Speaking in Hong Kong on his first foreign trip since the referendum, Price said that Brexit could lead to a “second golden age of trade and investment”.

This is, he explained, because Britain now has a blank piece of paper to agree new deals with countries around the world. “Freed from Brussels’ more bureaucratic tendencies, we will be able to tackle any excessive red tape that can choke small businesses,” he said. The fall in the value of sterling will also help exports and attract investments, Price explained.

This may sound wildly optimistic at the moment, but Price was at least realistic too. Britain must expand its team of trade negotiators, talk to businesses about what they want from trade deals, and be “calm and collaborative”, he added.

Amid so much uncertainty, it was welcoming to hear someone in authority talk about some sort of plan. “I have every confidence we will make this work,” he said. Why weren’t Brexiters talking the same way 10 days ago?

BHS finger-pointing brought it to its knees

The BHS scandal is about much more than Sir Philip Green and Dominic Chappell, the two characters at the centre of the grim story about how an 88-year-old company was brought to its knees.

The demise of the retailer and the subsequent investigation by MPs has raised important questions about the relationship between advisory firms and their client in the City.

That is why Frank Field and Iain Wright, the chairs of the parliamentary committee investigating BHS, have written to the Financial Reporting Council to ask the City regulator to broaden its investigation into PwC, which audited BHS in the years before Green sold it to Chappell.

What has become clear is that there is little incentive for an adviser to flag up problems with a deal or business. It is also straightforward for a business and its advisers to duck responsibility when something goes wrong simply by pointing the finger of blame at each other.

The government has tried to address this since the financial crisis by forcing businesses to rotate the auditor they use. But more needs to be done in the legal world and with investment banks. Green’s advisers, for example, should have had a legal obligation to ensure that Chappell passed rudimentary tests about being a fit and proper person to run a business with a £571m pension deficit.