NatWest tumbles to £351m loss in 2020 as bank shuts door on Irish market February 19, 2021 NatWest has today announced that it will pull out of its operations in the Republic of Ireland after reporting a £351m annual loss. The bank intends to withdraw from its Ulster Bank but operations will not be affected in Northern Ireland. It will exit the country following a strategic review and send $4.84bn worth of [...]
Pound sterling in touching distance of $1.40 as currencies enter ‘post-Covid world’ February 18, 2021 Pound sterling in touching distance of $1.40 as currencies enter 'post-Covid world'
Wall Street joins FTSE in the red following gloomy jobs data February 18, 2021 Wall Street faced a sea of red this morning as shares slid across the board after an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims highlighted the fragile labour market recovery. A report from the US Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits were 861,000 last week, compared with 848,000 in the prior week. The [...]
Exclusive: Cashplus hires new chairman after securing banking licence February 18, 2021 Digital challenger bank Cashplus has hired banking veteran Mark Sismey-Durrant as its new chairman just weeks after securing a new banking licence. Earlier this month the Prudential Regulation Authority granted Cashplus a full UK banking licence 16 years after it was founded. Sismey-Durrant, previously chief executive of Sun Bank, Heritable Bank and most recently Hampshire [...]
Analysts: ‘Dogged’ Barclays weathering pandemic storm as investment banking arm booms February 18, 2021 Barclays’ investment banking arm is ‘firing on all cylinders’ after posting a record income earlier this morning. The division’s success has helped the bank to soften the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit profits repeatedly in 2020. John Moore, senior investment manager at Brewin Dolphin, deems the success of Barclays’ investment division ‘ironic’ [...]
Barclays to keep ‘significant presence’ in Canary Wharf despite pandemic February 18, 2021 Barclays chief executive Jes Staley today insisted the bank will keep a “significant presence” in Canary Wharf despite a shift to home working prompted by the pandemic. Staley last year prompted speculation that Barclays could cut down its office space in the financial hub after he said the outbreak of Covid-19 could make large offices [...]
Barclays to resume dividend as Covid loan provision hits £4.8bn February 18, 2021 Barclays today said it will resume its annual dividend as the banking giant’s profit suffered a less severe hit from the pandemic than expected. The bank announced a dividend of 1p per share, as well as a £700m share buyback, after regulators banned payouts last year following the outbreak of Covid-19. It came as Barclays [...]
Remote working will come at a cost, FTSE and S&P 500 hiring execs warn February 18, 2021 Remote working will come at a cost, FTSE and S&P 500 hiring execs warn
Brexit is ‘remarkable opportunity’ to change City regulations, say MPs February 17, 2021 Brexit will provide the UK with a “remarkable opportunity” to change its financial services regulation in a bid to make the City more competitive globally, according to a cross-party group of MPs. A report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on financial services said the UK must not shy away from diverging from EU rules [...]
Peter Hargreaves to sell £300m worth of shares in Hargreaves Lansdown February 16, 2021 The co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, one of the UK’s largest financial services firms, has announced he is selling £300m worth of shares in the company. Peter Hargreaves, the largest shareholder in the firm he set up in 1981, will sell the shares through an accelerated bookbuild offering to institutional investors. Barclays, which is acting as [...]