Rishi Sunak’s Autumn Budget: A quick overview of what has been announced October 27, 2021 Downing in numbers and announcements? No worries, here are the main points from Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget. – The Budget is focused on the “post-Covid” era, according to the Chancellor, and will pave the way for the “Prime Minister’s economy of higher wages, higher skills, and rising productivity”. – Independent forecaster the Office for Budget [...]
Champagne in Canary Wharf: Sunak helps banks to save £4bn following Budget cut in surcharge tax October 27, 2021 The cut to the banking surcharge, announced in today’s Budget, will help UK banks to save £4bn in the next five years. A surcharge of 8 per cent was cut to 3 per cent by Chancellor Rishi Sunak to “maintain the competitiveness of our financial services”, he said. As a result, the amount paid by [...]
Budget 2021: Bank surcharge slashed but lenders still stung by higher taxes October 27, 2021 UK banks will still be stung by a higher tax rate on their profits even though Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed he will slash the bank surcharge. Sunak told the House of Commons today that the bank surcharge will drop to three per cent from eight per cent in 2023. However, the increase in the headline [...]
Santander beats forecasts following strong UK performance October 27, 2021 Spanish bank Santander smashed profit expectations for the third quarter driven by robust lending activity in its mortgage unit. The lender pulled in more than £1.4bn in pre-tax profits in the year to September, up nearly 400 per cent. Over the same period last year, profits were just £299m. A red hot UK housing market, [...]
City banks and financial services firms bet heavily on tech and data analytics October 27, 2021 Banking and financial services firms plan to step up their tech investments in the coming 12 months to improve both front and back-end technology. In fact, nearly three in four financial institutions has made improving the quality of their core technologies a priority, while 65 per cent of financial services players plan to pump more [...]
Centrica boss warns of extra £100 energy costs facing UK households October 26, 2021 UK households will face £100 in extra costs following the collapse of multiple small energy firms, warns Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica. Speaking to a House of Lords committee, O’Shea said, “The current retail market failures will put £100 on the bills of every single home in the UK. The CEO argued that [...]
UBS smashes expectations with best profits for six years October 26, 2021 Swiss investment banking giant UBS registered its best quarterly profit for six years driven by a sharp uptick in trading activity by the world’s ultra wealthy. Net profits came in at $2.3bn in the three months to the end of September, well ahead of analysts’ expectations of $1.5bn. More to follow.
UK banks still stung by largest tax raid even if bank surcharge is slashed October 25, 2021 London will sting banks with the largest tax raid out of all of the world’s leading finance hubs even if the Chancellor slashes the bank surcharge at this week’s budget. UK based banks will still be hit by a 46.5 per cent levy in 2024 even if Chancellor Rishi Sunak cuts the bank surcharge to [...]
HSBC online banking hit by an outage, impacting business customers October 25, 2021 HSBC’s online banking has been down this morning, according to reports, which primarily impacted the bank’s business customers. Service complaints spiked at around 9:30am this morning, according to DownDetecter, with more than 60 per cent of the complaints regarding HSBC’s online banking. The issue had largely been resolved by around 11:30am, with reports of the [...]
Paying off debt is preventing half of all SMEs from investment and growth, Lloyds Bank warns October 25, 2021 More than half of small and medium sized enterprises are held back from investing in itself to grow for the future as funds are taken up by debt repayments. The warning comes from Lloyds Bank, which said this morning that even though the debt repayments are affordable for most SMEs, servicing the debt does prevent [...]