City cautiously approves of chancellor’s post-Brexit regulations plan January 19, 2020 The City of London Corporation has responded with cautious approval to chancellor Sajid Javid’s statement that post-Brexit financial services trade with the EU should be on the basis of “outcome-based” equivalence of rules. The chancellor has faced a backlash from car manufacturers and business bodies, however, after he told the Financial Times that the UK [...]
London firms now more pessimistic about Brexit than rest of country January 19, 2020 London firms are now more pessimistic about the effect Brexit will have on the economy than the UK as a whole, new analysis has shown, despite being less daunted than the rest of the country by the prospect a year ago. However, the capital’s businesses remain more confident about their trading prospects, hiring intentions and [...]
Government launches initiatives to boost City investment in Africa January 17, 2020 International development secretary Alok Sharma today announced a range of initiatives to spur the City of London to boost investment in Africa by billions of pounds. The schemes include a competition for fund managers to identify new investment products for Africa, as well as money to improve the financial systems and regulations of 45 developing [...]
Revealed: This was the best performing UK stock of the last decade January 17, 2020 Ashtead Group, an industrial equipment rental firm, was the best performing UK stock on the UK’s FTSE 350 over the last decade, data firm Refinitiv said today, with a compound annual growth rate of over 40 per cent. A £1,000 investment 10 years ago in Ashtead, which was founded in Surrey and is now City-based, [...]
Goldman-backed telecoms firm on brink of £200m Talktalk deal January 16, 2020 Goldman Sachs-backed telecoms firm City Fibre could seal its £200m takeover of a Talktalk division as soon as this weekend. The deal, which was first reported in August, was put on hold in November when Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party vowed to nationalise BT’s broadband infrastructure arm and provide free broadband if they won the December [...]
Ex-banker lands €52m fine for smuggling Picasso painting from Spain January 16, 2020 A former Spanish bank boss has been slapped with a €52m (£44m) fine after he was found guilty of smuggling a Picasso painting abroad that had been designated national treasure. Jaime Botin, a scion of a famous Spanish banking family and a former chairman of Bankinter, was handed an 18-month prison sentence that his age [...]
BNY Mellon shares tumble after earnings miss January 16, 2020 Shares in BNY Mellon have fallen eight per cent in US trading after the lender’s fourth-quarter profit missed analysts’ estimates today. Net income at the US’s biggest custodian bank rose 67 per cent year on year in the final quarter to $1.4bn (£1.1bn) – but much of this was due to the sale of an [...]
Morgan Stanley caps off earnings season with record profit January 16, 2020 Morgan Stanley’s profit jumped almost 50 per cent in the final quarter of 2019, its results showed today, pushing the lender’s yearly earnings to a record high. The last of the Wall Street giants to report its fourth-quarter earnings, Morgan Stanley also achieved record revenue in 2019 as its bond-trading arm prospered. Profit rose 46 [...]
Donald Trump brands China trade deal ‘one of the greatest ever’ January 16, 2020 Donald Trump has labelled the agreement the US signed with China yesterday as “one of the greatest trade deals ever made”, adding that it has put the US in a “great position” for the next stage of talks. The world’s two biggest economies signed a “phase one” trade deal at the White House in Washington [...]
Tackle badly-paid work to boost productivity, says new research January 16, 2020 The UK government should focus on raising the pay of the poorest in Britain and encouraging greater worker representation to tackle the country’s long-running productivity crisis, according to a new study published by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Increasing productivity – the amount produced per hour worked – is vital to the long-term growth [...]
