Brexit: Truss wants ‘call in’ power to allow ministers to overrule City regulators August 10, 2022 Liz Truss wants to give ministers the power to overrule decisions made by the UK’s financial services regulators in a move that is set to create serious tensions with the Bank of England. The Tory leadership frontrunner wants to revive the policy, which was recently ditched by the Treasury, as a part of the government’s [...]
Three in four Brits want hybrid work to cope with cost of living crisis August 10, 2022 Three in four British workers want hybrid work to cope with the cost of living crisis gripping the country. Employees want their employers to offer flexible hybrid working as inflation surges to record levels of 9.4 per cent in the country, a survey by hiring software company Greenhouse found today. As the cost of essentials [...]
Rampant inflation to put public services under ‘visible strain’ unless government ramps up spending August 10, 2022 Rampant inflation is putting the NHS and other public services “under considerable, and visible, strain,” top economic experts have warned today. Government departments and local councils are set to struggle to provide services to taxpayers due to swelling costs eating up their budgets. Higher inflation will erode more than 40 per cent of announced funding [...]
Recession fears outweigh tight supplies as oil market rally remains elusive August 9, 2022 Oil prices edged up today, even though both major benchmarks remain weighed down by fears of a drawn-out economic downturn.
US inflation shock may force Fed to launch one percentage point rate hike August 9, 2022 A scorching set of new US inflation numbers released tomorrow could force the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates by the steepest amount in recent history, Wall Street analysts are betting. Fed chief Jerome Powell and co have already had to hike the world’s most important interest rate by 225 basis points since March, the [...]
Don’t rule out even more rate rises, Bank of England’s Ramsden warns August 9, 2022 The Bank of England will have to build on the biggest rate rise in nearly 30 years to sweep inflation out of the UK, a senior official at the monetary authority said today. Dave Ramsden, deputy governor at the Bank, told Reuters “it’s more likely than not that we will have to raise Bank Rate [...]
Millions of Brits in for shock charges as credit card rates hit highest level since 1998 August 9, 2022 With credit card borrowing growing at its fastest pace since 2005, new analysis shared with City A.M. this morning shows that last month average rates on credit cards hit their highest level since 1998. An analysis of the Bank of England’s quoted household interest rate figures uncovered that average credit card rates jumped 0.23 percentage [...]
Heatwave drives retail sales but autumn slowdown anticipated as inflation masks falling volumes August 9, 2022 The summer is set to be “the lull before the storm,” with consumers splashing out on heatwave essentials at the tills while inflation masks a drop in volume sales. UK retail sales increased 1.6 per cent on a like-for-like basis from July 2021, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG sales monitor. However, [...]
Merge UK’s financial services regulators into one body, says Tory think tank August 8, 2022 The government should consider merging the UK’s several financial services regulators into one body post-Brexit, an influential Tory think tank has said. A new report from the centre-right Policy Exchange, which was founded by Michael Gove, today said “meeting the demands” of the multiple City regulators can be “a major barrier to innovation” for new [...]
Financials boost FTSE 100 as City leans into quiet summer period August 8, 2022 A rally among financial stocks boosted London markets today as the City leant into the quieter summer period. The capital’s premier FTSE 100 index climbed 0.57 per cent to 7,482.37 points, while the domestically-focused mid-cap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, jumped 0.33 per cent to 20,118.44 [...]