Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers locked out of accounts January 1, 2020 Some customers of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were left unable to access their accounts on New Year’s day after Lloyds Bank suffered an outage. The issue left many customers exasperated, coming on New Year’s Day, a public holiday when bank branches are closed. Across its platforms, Lloyds group has around nine million online [...]
Mark Carney warns financial sector over climate change December 30, 2019 Bank of England governor Mark Carney has warned that the financial sector must stop investing in fossil fuels faster in order to avoid irreversible global warming. Carney, who will step down from his central bank role next year, said pension fund analysis showed that “if you add up the policies of all of companies out [...]
Interest rates unlikely to rise in 2020, says ECB policymaker Robert Holzmann December 28, 2019 A European Central Bank policymaker has said it is unlikely interest rates will be lifted back into positive territory next year. Robert Holzmann cited Brexit as being likely to cause renewed concern toward the end of 2020. Read more: New ECB president Legarde tells governments to hite spending to tackle downturn The governing council voted [...]
Regulator ramps up Lloyd’s of London whistleblowing monitoring December 23, 2019 The Bank of England has ramped up its monitoring of Lloyd’s on London’s whistleblowing processes, it said today. The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) announced the insurance market had agreed to extra checks. Read more: FCA head Andrew Bailey confirmed as next Bank of England governor In February, Lloyd’s told the PRA its only anonymous whistleblowing [...]
Why investors may need to dig a little deeper in 2020 December 23, 2019 Summing up the outlook for 2020, Schroders’ CIO thinks that superficially, overall market valuations look uninteresting. But dig a little deeper and there may be reasons for active investors to be enthusiastic about 2020. As we move into a new decade, we don’t think it’s time to party like it’s 1999, but it’s not a [...]
UK GDP growth revised up but ‘shows underlying slowing of economy’, ONS December 20, 2019 A revised estimate showed UK gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2019 showing an underlying slowing of the UK economy. This was higher than the expected 0.3 per cent but reflected high domestic and global uncertainty, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) said today in its quarterly [...]
What does the Conservatives’ victory mean for the UK economy and markets? December 20, 2019 The large majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservative party sees the pound and UK shares react positively, as investors welcome greater clarity on the policy backdrop. The pound climbs against other major currencies and stock markets gain as the scale of the Conservative win removes policy uncertainty. Within UK equities, companies whose operations focus on the [...]
FCA head Andrew Bailey confirmed as next Bank of England governor December 20, 2019 Andrew Bailey has been named as the new Bank of England (BoE) governor by chancellor Sajid Javid. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) boss will be responsible for steering the world’s fifth largest economy through Brexit and a troubled global macroeconomic climate. Read more: Bank of England refers hedge fund eavesdropping to regulator Announcing Bailey’s appointment, [...]
Why Davos matters in the millennial world December 20, 2019 Davos. Even the word conjures up images of Alpine glamour, exclusivity, high society and power. This week we learned that Boris Johnson has banned his ministers from attending the 2020 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town, Downing Street stressing that the new government is focusing on “delivering for the people, not champagne with billionaires”. [...]
Bank of England refers hedge fund eavesdropping to regulator December 19, 2019 The Bank of England (BoE) has referred the hacking of its market-sensitive press conferences to the financial watchdog, after it emerged that an audio feed was supplied to high-speed traders moments ahead of the official broadcast. The Bank confirmed what it called a “wholly unacceptable” use of a back-up audio feed by a third-party supplier, [...]