FTSE 100 Live: Natwest bumper dividend, stocks tick up February 13, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. The City was left stunned yesterday after Schroders entered into a surprise £10bn deal with Nuveen, which holds $1.4tn in assets, after speculation of a sale was rebuffed in July. Schroders Group chief Richard Oldfield had previously squashed rumours that the Schroder family, who control [...]
GDP: UK faces ‘most dismal decade for growth in 100 years’ February 12, 2026 The UK economy had a minor expansion in the fourth quarter of 2025 coming a touch below expectations as an expected boost from the services sector failed to come to fruition. Fresh figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the economy expanded a sluggish 0.1 per cent in three months to December 2025. [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Schroders in £10bn deal; UK economic growth lags February 12, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. It was another record day for the FTSE 100 on Wednesday, which secured its highest close of all time. On a strong day for commodity-related stocks in London, London’s blue-chip index closed 1.14 per cent higher at 10,472p. But it wasn’t all cheery in the [...]
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury for ‘Department for Growth’ February 11, 2026 The Liberal Democrats have laid out plans to scrap the Treasury department if elected in favour of a ‘Department for Growth’. Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader and Treasury spokeswoman, said on Wednesday took aim at failed government economic policy and said the Treasury “does too much”. “Fiscal policy, economic policy and controlling government spending. [...]
Heathrow warns on losing European crown without expansion February 11, 2026 Heathrow Airport has kicked off the new year with a shattering of its previous traffic record but has offered a stark warning it could lose its crown without progress on expansion. Some 6.5m passengers travelled through the airport in January, marking a 2.2 per cent increase on last year and making it the busiest January [...]
Bank of England raises alarm on unemployment as interest rates unchanged February 5, 2026 The Bank of England has held interest rates but policymakers warned that the spiralling unemployment rate and weak growth was weighing down on price growth. In its decision on Thursday, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted 5-4 to leave interest rates at 3.75 per cent. But economists warned that unemployment could jump higher over the [...]
Britain’s growth slumps and the Business Secretary scratches his head February 4, 2026 Having spent another day wading through the Epstein-Mandelson email traffic I was going to write another column about how unbelievably grubby the revelations are, but it’s too depressing. So, I thought I’d focus on something more cheerful; the latest downgrades to the UK’s economic growth forecasts. On his visit to China alongside the PM, the [...]
Cost of hiring graduates shot up after Reeves’ tax raids February 4, 2026 The cost of hiring graduates and other young Brits in entry-level roles increased by seven per cent in real terms after Chancellor Rachel Reeves hiked employers’ national insurance and raised the national living wage, economists have found. A new set of forecasts and analysis by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) has [...]
Bank of England names first fintech cohort for scale-up regulator February 3, 2026 The Bank of England has named the first handful of UK fintech talent which will be overseen by the new regulatory ‘Scale-Up’ unit. Small business lenders OakNorth and Allica Bank – which was named the fastest-growing fintech ever by Deloitte – were listed as two of the firms that had been accepted into the first [...]
Labour ministers, please stop begging us to celebrate your tiny wins January 27, 2026 The housing secretary has decried newspapers for burying good news, but Labour's tiny upticks in tiny numbers are hardly worth celebration.