Brexit talks need direction of travel by June or the banks will leave the City February 8, 2018 | City Talk According to one of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) most senior regulators, British-based banks are running out of time to guarantee they have continued access to the single market. Sabine Lautenschläger, an ECB board member, said any British bank wanting to relocate to the euro area “should really have submitted its license application already”, and [...]
Global markets are correcting not crashing February 7, 2018 | City Talk When it came, the correction looked brutal: $4 trillion wiped off global stocks in a single day. But let’s not get carried away here. This was a correction rather than a rout whatever the newspapers might have us believe. The Dow Jones is still up 21% compared with the same time a year ago. The [...]
Seedrs opens up secondary market to allow trading of shares in the likes of Revolut, CommuterClub and Hummus Bros February 6, 2018 Seedrs has today opened up its secondary market to allow more freedom for sellers and traders, City A.M. can reveal. Previously buyers could only use the secondary market to purchase shares in companies which they had already invested in through Seedrs. From today, anyone will be able to buy shares in companies which have raised [...]
Lloyds ban on credit card Bitcoin purchases is the right move February 6, 2018 | City Talk On Monday, Lloyds Banking Group announced it has banned its credit cards from being used to buy Bitcoin. The decision includes Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA credit cards. It follows a similar move by US banks. It’s a hard decision to argue with. Regardless of the inherent volatility in the value of [...]
Britain already has a free trade deal with China, leaving Europe won’t improve it February 5, 2018 | City Talk Between 1839 and 1841 and then again between 1856 and 1860, the British Empire launched a series of military engagements against China. The cause? A trade imbalance between two of the biggest superpowers in the world. Demand in Britain for Chinese goods including silk, porcelain and tea was huge. It created an enormous trade imbalance [...]
Nick Jones’s Soho House primed for $2bn float on New York Stock Exchange February 4, 2018 Private members' club giant Soho House is plotting a $2bn (£1.4bn) float on the New York stock market. Founded by entrepreneur Nick Jones, the network of clubs, restaurants and workspaces has sites across the world, with recent additions including the City's new hotspot The Ned. The company has now hired bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman [...]
Higher oil prices push Shell earnings up 184 per cent February 1, 2018 Royal Dutch Shell has reported a 184 per cent increase in income for 2017, thanks in part to higher oil and gas prices. The figures Income rose to $12.98bn (£9.11bn) last year, compared with $4.58bn in 2016. Basic earnings per share rose 172 per cent, from $0.58 to $1.58, and the dividend was maintained at [...]
Wall Street may be calming down after its month long rally February 1, 2018 | City Talk Wall Street’s bull run had been due a reality check for weeks. Yet when it eventually came, the only surprise was its speed and scale. The trigger was that time-honoured red flag – an analyst note which prompted US traders to question their recent run of frothy exuberance. On Monday morning, Goldman Sachs warned that [...]
Sir Humphrey’s conclusion – Brexit is going to hurt after all January 31, 2018 | City Talk The famously verbose Sir Humphrey – the civil servant star of Yes Minister – was a master at sugarcoating things. Yet his real life equivalents – Whitehall’s top civil servants – pulled no punches in a leaked analysis of the impact Brexit will have on Britain’s economy. The searing assessment imagined a worst-case scenario and [...]
Will Apple take the Dow over 27,000 this week? Only a fool would bet against it January 30, 2018 | City Talk How much higher, and how quickly, can Wall Street rise? It’s a question this column has asked a couple of times, but it’s one that bears repeating after the Dow Jones hit a new record close on Friday. Might we see the Dow break 27,000? Market sentiment suggests yes. Moreover, it suggests it could do [...]