UK launches register of overseas property owners in clampdown on ‘corrupt elites’ August 1, 2022 Individuals that own UK properties via chains of “secretive” shell companies will from today be forced to reveal their true identities, after the UK government launched a new register of UK property owners today. The first-of-its-kind register will require those seeking to buy or own UK property via offshore entities to list the identities of [...]
MPs urge Liverpool FC to cut ties with Standard Chartered over support for Hong Kong security law July 31, 2022 MPs have urged Liverpool football club to break its sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered over the the bank’s past support for a draconian national security law in Hong Kong. In a letter to Billy Hogan, the football team’s CEO, MPs and peers from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong highlighted that following mounting authoritarianism [...]
NatWest shock profits lift London’s FTSE 100 July 29, 2022 London markets were boosted by investors piling into NatWest after it announced it will hand back £2.1bn to investors. The capital’s premier FTSE 100 index climbed 0.39 per cent to 7,374.25 points, while the domestically-focused mid-cap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, added 1.32 per cent to [...]
Standard Chartered announces fresh £410m share buyback programme on profit surge July 29, 2022 Asia-focused British bank Standard Chartered today announced a fresh $500m (£410m) share buyback programme. Higher interest rates boosted the lender’s bottom line, with pre-profits climbing eight per cent to $2.77bn (£2.3bn) in the six months to June. In the second quarter alone, profits surged 12 per cent to $1.3bn (£1.1bn), above analysts’ expectations, sending its [...]
NatWest ups dividends as profits surge on the back of interest rate hikes July 29, 2022 NatWest today upped its dividend after its pre-tax profits increased 13 per cent to more than £2.6bn for the first half of 2022. Higher lending incomes on the back of the Bank of England’s interest rate hike lifted NatWest’s finances and saw the bank raise its full-year revenue forecast to around £12.5bn, up from previous [...]
Hefty £1.5bn trading error legal charge erodes Barclays profits July 28, 2022 A £1.5bn legal charge for a trading error has eroded British bank Barclays’s profits, it announced today. Hefty litigation and regulatory costs to deal with selling too many financial products dealt a major blow to Barclays’s first half earnings. Pre-tax profits dropped by a quarter to £3.7bn in the six months to June, down from [...]
Metro Bank losses narrow despite big loan-loss reserve charge July 28, 2022 A ramping up in lending to riskier borrowers and an anticipated uptick in defaults caused by inflation surging to a 40-year high has led Metro Bank to set aside millions of pounds of loan-loss reserves. The lender, which has been grappling with severe under performance for years, narrowed losses in the six months to June [...]
Surge in loan-loss reserves poison Santander profits July 28, 2022 Funds set aside to deal with an expected jump in loan defaults caused by borrowers’ being squeezed by a historic inflation surge has whacked Spanish bank Santander’s profits. The lender, which has a big presence in the UK, banked over €500m (£420m) in loan-loss reserves over the three months to June, up 25 per cent [...]
TSB’s profits more than double as lending and spending soars July 28, 2022 Edinburgh headquartered bank TSB today said its profits for the first half of the year had more than doubled, as its incomes were boosted by higher lending balances and increased card spending following the end of Covid restrictions. The bank said its statutory pre-tax profits had increased 139.9 per cent to £102.9m, as customer lending [...]
Exclusive: Pro-democracy activist Nathan Law labels HSBC a ‘cheerleader’ for Chinese Communist Party July 27, 2022 HSBC is “cheerleading” for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) campaign to strip away Hong Kongers’ human rights, Nathan Law, a pro-democracy activist, told City A.M. today. Law, a former member of Hong Kong’s parliament, accused Britain’s largest lender of putting profits ahead of taking a stand against Beijing eroding the city’s citizens’ freedoms through the [...]