Business investment catches up with consumer spending boom May 22, 2014 Britain’s recovery is now balanced, official figures showed today and confounding worries that the surge in GDP is based only on household spending splurges. Business investment shot up by 2.7 per cent in the first quarter of the year, outstripping household spending which rose 0.8 per cent. Although business investment is a volatile [...]
Brace for impact: Bank of England issues warning on house prices May 21, 2014 Super low interest rates could inflate a housing bubble, the Bank of England admitted today, indicating it could step in to cool the rampant market soon. The monetary policy committee (MPC) said it will not raise interest rates to tackle to risks yet, but has pointed to the financial policy committee (FPC) as a [...]
Confusion reigns as forward guidance fails to set out clear interest rate path May 15, 2014 Mark Carney wants to give as much info as he can on when interest rates will go up – after more than five years at 0.5 per cent, this is a great big challenge for the Bank of England. He doesn't want to panic anyone. That is one reason why Carney introduced forward guidance, [...]
Carney wishes he could build houses May 14, 2014 The Bank of England governor showed his frustration at the housing market today, in an unusually open display of irritation at the demands placed on the institution. Prices are soaring in areas like London – some boroughs have seen prices rise by as much as 30 per cent in the last year – and [...]
Citizens wants to dominate north east US May 13, 2014 RBS is cutting right back in the UK and across the world – it only wants to focus on British retail and business banking. That means slashing its investment bank further, an efficiency drive in branches and selling overseas units. One of those is Citizens its US arm, which could be worth as [...]
That bonus hike was all part of Barclays’ grand plan May 8, 2014 Remember when Barclays increased investment bankers’ bonuses even as profits fell? It went down pretty badly with investors when the 2013 results were announced back in February. At the time chief executive Antony Jenkins could only say that he had to pay more so that staff would stay at Barclays instead of jumping [...]
UK’s first bank IPO in a decade – OneSavings Bank comes to market May 7, 2014 OneSavings Bank, the lender built by private equity firm JC Flowers, is to float on the stock market at a valuation of up to £600m. It was created out of the Kent Reliance Building Society which JC Flowers rescued in a recapitalisation deal in 2010. It plans to sell off a stake of [...]
Don’t panic – British house prices are really boring May 6, 2014 You wouldn’t guess it from London’s boom in house prices, but Britain’s market overall is perhaps the most boring in the developed world, OECD numbers showed today. Prices increased just 1.3 per cent last year, the organisation said – a shockingly dull rise. And don't just take that number in isolation. Britain is [...]
JP Morgan’s cutting edge bankers are in Dorset May 1, 2014 The glittering sky-scrapers of Canary Wharf and the tech hubs of Silicon Roundabout might seem the obvious places to look for the most advanced banking offices around. But JP Morgan thinks its Bournemouth campus, as the 4,000-staff site is know, is at the cutting edge. The giant US bank is spending almost $50m [...]
UK house prices are four years ahead of Europe’s April 30, 2014 Britain went through a pretty miserable recession following the financial crisis, and naturally house prices suffered. But look at this chart from Standard and Poor’s which shows how lucky Britain was to avoid the worst of the Eurozone crisis. The crunch in UK house prices, as a national average, lasted only until 2011. [...]
