Hotels, restaurants and pubs ‘optimistic’ about bounce back in trading March 8, 2021 Many hotel, restaurant and pub firms are “optimistic” about the future despite the pressures of the Covid-19 crisis, with most expecting trading to bounce back by the end of the year, a survey showed. Hotel businesses had the most positive outlook, with 83 per cent of the operators surveyed saying they were confident about future [...]
Budget 2021: As it happened March 3, 2021 Live updates and links to all our coverage, reactions and analyses as the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers the government’s Budget later today – at 12.30pm. Please also visit our dedicated Budget 2021 Hub. Wrap-up of the main Budget announcements Here’s a wrap-up of the main announcements made by the chancellor in his spring Budget: [...]
Sunak to crack down on Covid support fraudsters with new taskforce February 27, 2021 A new fraud taskforce to crack down on people who have exploited the government’s Covid-19 support schemes will be unveiled at next week’s Budget. The Treasury has announced that it will put £100m into a new Taxpayer Protection Taskforce to investigate those who fraudulently made use schemes such as furlough and the Self Employment Income Support [...]
Businesses left in the lurch as up to £1.4bn of Covid-19 grants still unpaid February 10, 2021 Local authorities across England are still yet to pay out as much as £1.4bn in emergency Covid-19 grants, putting thousands of businesses at risk of further job cuts. Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request revealed that an estimated 87 per cent of the £1.6bn Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) fund still has not been [...]
Exclusive: ‘Normal’ bank lending to SMEs down 10 per cent in 2020 as emergency loan use explodes February 10, 2021 Non-emergency lending by banks to SMEs dropped 10 per cent in 2020, while emergency coronavirus funding ballooned. ‘Normal’ lending to SMEs fell from £168bn in December 2019 to £152bn a year later, research by debt specialist ACP Altenburg Advisory found. At the same time, emergency coronavirus funding via the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBLIS) [...]
UK business groups give backing to Bounce Back Loans repayment extension February 8, 2021 The UK’s largest business advocacy groups have backed Rishi Sunak’s move to offer more generous repayment terms on £45bn of emergency Covid Bounce Back Loans. The Treasury announced yesterday that the 1.4m businesses who have taken out a Bounce Back Loan will be able to pay it back over ten years instead of six, make [...]
Sunak extends Covid loan relief after BoE says £22bn may never be repaid February 5, 2021 Rishi Sunak to extend Covid loan relief with longer repayment time for small businesses
TSB reports losses as pandemic prompts lending surge February 1, 2021 TSB’s full-year financial performance was dented by the coronavirus pandemic as lending rose sharply, the bank announced today. Statutory loss before tax was £204.6m in 2020, compared to a £46m profit in 2019. The losses largely reflects the adoption of government measures in response to Covid-19, as well as unemployment rates and reduced customer spending. [...]
Government set to write off estimated £31bn of pandemic loans January 29, 2021 An estimate of £31bn of government loans handed out during the pandemic will have to be written off, according to the UK’s spending watchdog. In its latest Covid-19 Cost Tracker, the National Audit Office (NAO) forecast that the total cost of the pandemic for Britain will balloon to £271bn, of which £116bn has been spent [...]
Will Europe’s smaller companies deliver big returns? January 7, 2021 European equities have been largely unloved by investors for some time, having lagged their global peers over the past decade: the MSCI Europe ex UK Index has grown by circa 6% pa whilst the MSCI World Index is up circa 11% pa. European smaller companies have fared markedly better than their large cap counterparts however, [...]