Quids out: The Treasury wants you to spend your pound coins before it’s too late February 28, 2017 With mere weeks to go before the launch of the new, 12-sided £1 coin, the Treasury has warned the nation it must either use its pound coins – or lose them. The new £1 launches on 28 March – but all old coins need to be spent by 15 October, the Treasury said today. The Royal Mint is [...]
Virgin Money chief exec Jayne-Anne Gadhia: Brexit made us shelf plans for small business banking, but it might have worked out in our favour February 28, 2017 A series of unforeseen events means Virgin Money might be better off after having to drop a deal to go into small business banking because of Brexit. The challenger bank had been due to acquire an asset finance business, which would have allowed it to expand its offering into small business banking, but changed its [...]
Fraud squad lawyer tells court two ex-Barclays traders accused of Libor rigging treated honesty as if it were expendable February 28, 2017 A lawyer acting for the fraud squad told a court today that two ex-Barclays traders accused of Libor rigging treated honesty as if it were expendable. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which is prosecuting the case, has claimed Stylianos Contogoulas, 45, and Ryan Reich, 35, played roles in a conspiracy to fix the benchmark rate between 1 June [...]
Transitional arrangements after Brexit could take 18 months or more, says Charlotte Hogg, the new Bank of England deputy governor February 28, 2017 The Bank of England (BoE)'s new deputy governor Charlotte Hogg today said UK banks will need 12 to 18 months at least to make transitional arrangements after certainty on Brexit negotiations is reached. Appearing before the Treasury Select Committee, Hogg said banks will need additional time after the two-year negotiations are reached to change their business models in terms [...]
Virgin Money increases profits, as Brexit yet to wobble the business February 28, 2017 Virgin Money said profits grew during 2016, as any Brexit fallout was yet to hit the challenger's bottom line. The figures The bank, whose business ambition is to make "everyone better off", reported statutory profits before tax of £194.4m, up 41 per cent compared with £138m in 2015. The increase in underlying profits before tax was [...]
Human Rights Issues and Your Portfolio February 28, 2017 | City Talk We would rather not think about human rights issues when it comes to asset allocation. In the developed world, we often treat human rights violations — modern-day slavery, child labour, etc. — as anachronisms, at least as far they concern us. Or we dismiss them as problems for someone else to deal with, whether activists, [...]
Blockchain for banks is a “long way off” says influential central banker February 27, 2017 Blockchain fintech has a “long way to go” to satisfy financial regulators, according to an influential board member of the European Central Bank (ECB). Benoit Coeure said the underlying distributed ledger technology could pose new risks to the financial system, including legal and operational obstacles. Coeure said: “Distributed technology could become a game-changer for payment, [...]
Tandem Bank’s chief executive Ricky Knox talks sarongs, dumb pipes, ornithology and why Facebook is scared of banking February 27, 2017 "Would you have called Amazon? I didn’t! We all thought that was just a fad – it was a bookseller. An online bookseller with that valuation? But the internet creates these giants – and it’s not just one or two of them. "Look at music – EMI is basically dead. Google – a little bulls*** [...]
Chancellor slams EU for tit-for-tat spat with US, over requirements for holding companies for non-EU banks February 27, 2017 The chancellor has revealed he is less than impressed with the European Commission for proposing a holding company rule for banks which could hurt non-EU lenders, as the EU retaliates against similar measures in the US. The European Commission last November put forward an intermediate holding company rule, which would require non-EU banks with EU operations to set [...]
UK banks’ bonus pools have shrunk five per cent over the last year, but bosses’ handouts are on the rise February 26, 2017 Bonus pools at the UK's big five banks have shrunk five per cent in the last year, but handouts to bosses have almost doubled in the same space of time. The total bonus pool for HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Standard Chartered and Barclays fell to around £5.6bn for 2016, compared with around £5.9bn in [...]