London homes still horribly expensive for first time buyers July 15, 2012 FIRST, the good news: the housing market is becoming less unaffordable for young people across the UK. The average price paid by a first-time buyer in June was affordable for someone on average earnings in 54 per cent of all UK local authority districts, the highest proportion for 10 years, according to the Halifax. At [...]
Government to announce £9bn railway scheme July 15, 2012 LONDON will gain an electrified railway service to Sheffield and plans to reopen the line between Oxford and Cambridge will take a step forward as part of a £9bn rail funding package that the government is expected to announce today. Transport secretary Justine Greening will unveil a UK rail investment plan for 2014-2019 that includes [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 15, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Europe’s banks face tougher demands The head of Europe’s top banking regulator has raised the bar for lenders’ capital requirements, insisting that the nine per cent capital ratio they had to hit as a “temporary buffer” by June is to become permanent. “The key thing will be capital conservation,” Mr Enria told the [...]
G4S failure was expected, says Jeremy Hunt July 15, 2012 CULTURE secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday voiced his support for embattled Olympics contractor G4S, saying the firm had “been quite honourable” in admitting it could not supply enough security staff just two weeks before the Games begin – a failure he branded “completely normal”. “They put their hands up. Nick Buckles, the chief executive, has said [...]
Weighed up and found wanting July 15, 2012 WHEN I interviewed Mark Hamilton, G4S’s managing director of security services for London 2012, this January, he admitted that becoming the official security provider to this summer’s Olympics blended risk with reward. The consequences for failure, even for something that wasn’t the firm’s fault, were very high, and had been weighed carefully by G4S against [...]
Takeover offers threaten to hit Direct Line plans for flotation July 15, 2012 DIRECT Line could see plans for a flotation dashed by two takeover bids, just weeks before its owner Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to file for the £3.2bn listing. American private equity firms Blackstone and Bain Capital are preparing a joint bid while a consortium of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Apax and BC Partners is [...]
Analysts fear new loans plan cannot succeed July 15, 2012 THE NEW funding for lending scheme (FLS) has received only a cautious welcome from economists, analysts and banks, with many worrying that there is insufficient demand for credit for the plan to make much of a difference to the economy. The scheme will see the Bank of England take illiquid assets off banks in exchange [...]
Coalition needs to do more to kick-start ailing property sector July 15, 2012 BRITAIN’S planning and property tax laws should be ripped up and banks should be forced to offer more mortgages in order to boost the country’s moribund real estate market, the country’s largest property services group argued yesterday. The number of house sales remains near historic lows, with figures from LSL suggesting June was the second [...]
Goldman Sachs profits set to disappoint as trading slows July 15, 2012 GOLDMAN Sachs is set to record another downbeat set of results tomorrow, a top analyst has warned, with poor profits driven by the weak economic outlook. Barclays’ Roger Freeman believes the banking giant’s second quarter profits will be down 23 per cent compared with the same quarter of 2011. In a research note Freeman warned [...]
KHERAJ IN RACE TO REPLACE BOB DIAMOND July 15, 2012 NAGUIB Kheraj could be in the running to take the top job at Barclays, it emerged over the weekend. The former finance director joins former JP Morgan boss Bill Winters, corporate and investment banking head Rich Ricci and Lloyds’ deputy chairman David Roberts as a frontrunner in the search, which is being conducted by executive [...]
