Banks and alternative finance: Liberum’s Cormac Leech how both industries should act October 29, 2015 Elon Musk once commented that “money is low bandwidth” – it’s highly susceptible to being overhauled by the internet. I was reminded of Musk’s observation by Cormac Leech, director of fintech at Liberum. It’s easy to get those inside the alternative lending industry to talk about how it’ll “change banking forever”. But what does someone [...]
FTSE 100 Index: Gold glitters and BT gets a good call to lift – London Report October 29, 2015 Gains in gold mining stocks and at BT helped to lift the FTSE 100 back towards the two-month highs it reached towards the end of last week. Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline also climbed 3.88 per cent after it posted better-than-expected earnings. Randgold and Fresnillo were the best-performing stocks on the blue-chip index, which climbed 1.1 per [...]
Best of the Brokers for 29 October 2015 October 29, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com MOTHERCARE Cantor Fitzgerald maintained its “sell” rating on the retailer, and cut its sales and earnings forecasts for 2016 and 2017. The broker said investors may be rattled by the lack of UK profit progress as it is “mainly coming via closed [...]
Oil performance is scary enough for Halloween October 29, 2015 FORGET scary movies this Halloween, consider instead the above graph, which shows just how badly oil has performed, compared to 2014 futures. Proving just how volatile the market is, oil massively outperformed futures contracts in 2006 and 2010, and then left investors disappointed in 2008, and this year, when prices plunged. No wonder the IMF [...]
What really lies behind anti-business feelings? October 28, 2015 Was there ever an age when politicians were revered? The question should be asked because when people complain about the perceived calibre or character of elected officials, they seem to do so as if harking back to a time when MPs had respect and goodwill lavished upon them by a grateful public. There may have [...]
City Moves for 29 October 2015 | Who’s switching jobs October 28, 2015 CHESTERTONS The property firm has appointed Archie Sykes as UK sales manager in its international residential development department. He joins from Berkeley Homes, where he was development sales manager for two London schemes. Sykes has also held roles at Hamptons International. HENDERSON GLOBAL INVESTORS The asset management firm has appointed Alex Mander as an associate [...]
Wall Street up as December hike signalled – New York Report October 28, 2015 The Federal Reserve’s decision yesterday to hold interest rates, amid signals that it might raise them in December, helped to push Wall Street sharply upwards. Stocks initially sold off following the statement, with the S&P 500 erasing close to a one per cent gain, but quickly rebounded to end at the day’s highs as investors [...]
Britain isn’t a free market: It’s time to imagine life beyond the state October 28, 2015 One of the most dangerous myths that pervades the political debate today is the idea that “neo-liberalism”, as the left describe it, has a stranglehold over economic policy. Certainly, if we compare the influence of government on our lives today with the early twentieth century, it is very clear that we live in a social [...]
Forget Nordic exceptionalism: Scandinavia grew wealthy despite big government October 28, 2015 I’ve just finished writing a global literature review of the relationship between government size and long-term economic growth. It addresses fundamental questions such as whether or not the relationship is positive or negative, and in which direction the causality runs. Does big government cause lower growth, or does lower growth cause bigger government? The answer [...]
We won’t end the UK’s culture of debt without tackling dire gaps in financial knowledge October 28, 2015 We all have financial ambitions in life: to buy our first car, to buy our first home, or to build a secure and healthy pension pot for our retirement. But while the vast majority of us have financial goals, less than half have a savings plan in place to deliver them. And what many [...]
