FTSE 100 slips ahead of London lockdown as job losses mount December 15, 2020 The FTSE 100 slipped into the red as London prepared itself for a new lockdown and job losses climbed, with the index bucking the trend of European and US markets which rose amid positivity about coronavirus vaccines. London’s biggest index was down 0.5 per cent in afternoon trading to 6,501 points. The FTSE 250 was [...]
London in Tier 3: Will the City return to normal after Covid? December 15, 2020 The decision to move London into Tier 3 at midnight on Wednesday, following substantial rises in Covid-19 cases, may mean further delays to City workers returning to the office. This will come as another disappointment to the City as it had planned to entice workers back into their offices during a ”back to work week” [...]
Vaccine ‘gamechanger’ will see UK economy bounce back sharply, analysts say December 15, 2020 The coronavirus vaccine will help the UK economy recover more rapidly than most experts think, according to economists at consultancy Capital Economics (CE) who predicted Covid will barely affect growth in the long-run. The respected economics consultancy predicted the economy would grow by about 7.5 per cent in both 2021 and 2022, after shrinking by [...]
Barclays fined £26m for mistreatment of customers in arrears December 15, 2020 The UK’s financial watchdog has fined Barclays £26m for failures in its treatment of customers who fell into financial difficulties. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found that Barclays had mistreated some retail and small business customers who fell into arrears between April 2014 and December 2018. Read more: Parlez-vous Français? Paris’ finance sector gets ready [...]
Parlez-vous Français? Paris’ finance sector gets ready to seize post-Brexit opportunities December 15, 2020 Paris’ claims to be Europe’s culture and culinary capital are well known, however its finance credentials are somewhat less established. The City of Light ranked behind London, Zurich, Luxembourg, Geneva, Frankfurt and even Edinburgh in the World Bank’s Global Financial Centres Index for 2020. However, with Brexit around the corner, and no full EU equivalence [...]
PM to visit India in January in bid to bolster economic ties December 15, 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson will fly to India in January 2021 in an effort to strengthen economic and political relations between the two countries. It will be Johnson’s first major bilateral visit since becoming PM, and will come soon after the UK leaves the EU single market at the end of the post-Brexit transition period [...]
UK companies record highest impairment charges since 2012 December 15, 2020 UK companies have recorded the highest goodwill impairments since 2012, new figures show, as Brexit uncertainty continues to have an effect on performance. In 2019 FTSE 100 companies recorded an aggregate impairment of 16bn, a 248 per cent increase from the previous year, according to research by Duff & Phelps. While UK companies within the [...]
Unemployment rate rises less than expected but redundancies hit record high December 15, 2020 The UK’s unemployment rate rose to 4.9 per cent in the three months to October, a lower increase than had been expected. The rate was up 0.1 per cent from the three months to September, when it stood at 4.8 per cent, new ONS figures showed. Economists polled by Reuters had expected the jobless rate [...]
Before the Bell: Coronavirus mutation unsettles the market as London faces Tier 3 December 15, 2020 European markets underwent a rather mixed session yesterday, with the FTSE100 underperforming after it was announced that London and a good part of the south east of England was being put into tier 3 restrictions at midnight tonight, due to a new strain of the coronavirus which was spreading at a faster rate. “This of [...]
Procuring in a crisis: The government must learn from the PPE uproar December 15, 2020 Covid-19 has revealed a great deal about how governments respond to crises. The results have been varied: from unprecedented schemes to support furloughed workers up and running a matter of days, to a contact tracing app still plagued with issues months later. In fact, while the pandemic may have shown how quickly things can be [...]