Soaring university student admissions helps housing provider Unite stay ahead of the game February 23, 2016 Investors piling into student housing and soaring university admissions helped one of the sector’s biggest property firms Unite Group deliver a leap in net asset value (NAV) and profits last year. The FTSE 250 company, which owns 46,000 beds across the UK valued at £3.8bn, said EPRA earnings, the industry benchmark, leapt by 84 per [...]
London Stock Exchange Group share price leaps as it confirms talks with Deutsche Boerse February 23, 2016 Shares in London Stock Exchange Group jumped more than 16 per cent to 2,689p in lunchtime trading, after reports emerged that it is talks with its German rival, Deutsche Boerse, over a merger. The London Stock Exchange subsequently confirmed the talks. "The boards believe that the potential merger would represent a compelling opportunity for both companies to strengthen [...]
Council spending on CCTV equipment cut in half over space of three years, but campaign group warns that a surveillance spending storm could be on the way February 23, 2016 It may always feel like somebody's watching you and you have no privacy, but you're probably less likely to be caught on CCTV than you were a few years ago. According to a report released today by civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, local authorities reduced the number of CCTV cameras they have by 12.5 per [...]
Drax Group share price falls as company slashes final dividend while profits for year ended December 2015 tumble February 23, 2016 Share price in Drax Group dropped today after the energy company cut its dividend and reported a sharp drop in profits. The company reported a profit before tax for the year ended December 2015 of £59m, down from £166m the year before. The electrical power company also announced it would be shelling out just 0.6p [...]
Property sales kicked off the year with a rise, HMRC property transaction figures show February 23, 2016 The number of properties sold at the start of 2016 across the UK was 7.7 per cent higher than in 2015, new figures reveal. Nearly 105,400 residential properties were sold in January and just over 9,600 non-residential, compared to 97,000 and 9,740 a year earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis. “Even as the housing market builds a head of [...]
Mark Carney tells MPs the Bank of England is not prepared to cut interest rates into negative territory…for now February 23, 2016 Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said the Bank does not yet consider negative interest rates to be an appropriate stimulus measure for the UK. He said the Bank would consider lowering rates below the current record low of 0.5 per cent if necessary, but they would be unlikely to go below zero. "One of the things [...]
Provident Financial share price up as lender announces boost to profits for year ended December 2015 February 23, 2016 Share price in Provident Financial rose this morning as the company announced a boost to its profits for the year ended December 2015. The lender, which has over 2m customers, reported statutory profits before tax of £273.6m, up 21.8 per cent compared with £224.6m the year before. Shares rose after the results were announced, trading up 2.8 per cent [...]
Bank of England’s Minouche Shafik and Martin Weale expect interest rates to go up sooner than financial markets are expecting February 23, 2016 Interest rates are likely to go up sooner and faster than is currently implied by a gauge of financial market expectations, two Bank of England rate setters have said today. Monetary policy committee member Minouche Shafik said rates would increase faster than implied by the market yield curve. The market yield curve currently points to the first rate [...]
Why investors are fretting about the bond market: High yield spreads are pricing in 2008 levels of defaults – while some experts say a liquidity squeeze is beginning February 23, 2016 Does the jump in high yield spreads say anything about the global economy? Markets have focused on oil prices as a barometer of health in the global economy and stock markets, but historically high yield spreads over the risk-free rate have been a much better indicator. Spreads have widened considerably lately, and now “the market as [...]
Government has poor grasp on fraud levels and the information it holds is incomplete, warns National Audit Office report February 23, 2016 Government lacks the right information to accurately detect and monitor levels of fraud, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO). The report, which was released today and focuses on fraud at central government expenditure level, warned that, with the exception of details on tax credit and benefit fraud, information collected by the [...]