July Budget 2015: Shares dive for green energy firms as Osborne scraps tax exemption July 8, 2015 In today's Budget, chancellor George Osborne announced that the government is scrapping a green tax exemption enjoyed by renewable energy companies since 2001. Read more: George Osborne cuts corporation tax and bank levy as he tells firms "Britain is open for business" Currently, tax is not paid on renewable electricity supplied to businesses under renewable [...]
Greek debt crisis: IMF’s Lagarde says debt restructuring needed July 8, 2015 IMF chief Christine Lagarde has stressed Greece's huge debt pile needs restructuring and said the organisation remains "fully engaged" with the cash-strapped country. "Greece is in a situation of acute crisis, which needs to be addressed seriously and promptly," she said during a speech at the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington. Earlier today Greek Prime Minister [...]
New York Stock Exchange resumes trading after outage July 8, 2015 The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has resumed trading after an outage lasting over three hours, which it said was due to a technical issue and not a cyber attack. Trading in all securities on the New York Stock Exchange halted at 11.32am ET (4.30pm BST) today. "The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is [...]
June 2015 FOMC Minutes: The Fed is worried about Greece July 8, 2015 Minutes from the Federal Reserve's June meeting show officials want to see further evidence the economy is picking up before they hike rates, and are concerned about the Greek debt crisis. The minutes from its meeting June 16-17 show officials have been pleased by positive economic developments such as strong consumer spending and signs wages [...]
July Budget 2015: Inheritance tax threshold to rise to exclude £1m homes July 8, 2015 The chancellor has increased the inheritance tax threshold, allowing £1m homes to be passed down to children after death to be free of tax. As part of today's July Budget, George Osborne announced that, from 2017, there will be a new £175,000 allowance on homes left to children or grandchildren. The new allowance is in addition [...]
TfL Tube strike 2015: Fitness First offers commuters free showers and gym classes July 8, 2015 Fitness First has come to the rescue of exasperated commuters ahead of the tube strike by offering free showers and training sessions across all of its London gyms tomorrow. Commuters who want to take advantage of the offer should bring their oyster card to one of Fitness First's 45 gyms listed below. "Fitness First is encouraging commuters across [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne’s favourite words July 8, 2015 He may have cut £12bn from welfare budgets – but chancellor George Osborne pronounced 9.847 words in the July Budget. Although, in the midst of jeers, he repeated some things – so we could just call it 10,000 words. Either way, he had a lot to say. Predominantly about welfare, tax credits and pensions – [...]
July Budget 2015: Osborne axes student grants and replaces them with loans July 8, 2015 Chancellor George Osborne has announced that student maintenance grants will be scrapped and replaced by loans, as part of his July Budget. "From the 2016-17 academic year we will replace maintenance grants with loans for new students – loans that only have to be paid back once they earn over £21,000 a year," he said. [...]
Microsft cuts thousands more jobs and takes $7.6bn writedown on Nokia phone business acquisition July 8, 2015 Microsoft chief Satya Nadella has made another round of job cuts as the business took a multi-billion dollar writedown on its purchase of Nokia. The struggling PC business will lay off 7,800 staff, the majority of whom work in the phone side of the business. It will also take a writedown of $7.6bn on the Nokia [...]
July Budget 2015: Here’s what Twitter said about George Osborne’s speech July 8, 2015 Before George Osborne even posed for the cameras with Budget box in hand, the pre-Budget buzz on Twitter had already reached 200 tweets per minute – then when he stepped up to the despatch box, that rocketed to more than 1,000 tweets per minute. The biggest talking point of the day was the student maintenance [...]