‘The food sucks and the sex is worse’: Barclays fraud trial execs joked about prison January 24, 2019 Ex-Barclays bosses on trial for fraud joked about going to jail while organising a crucial capital raising drive at the height of the financial crisis, with wealth manager Tom Kalaris saying “the food sucks and the sex is worse”. Another executive, Richard Boath, expressed fears the bank would be “basically dead” if it were unable to secure [...]
Retail sales fall as ‘suffocating’ Brexit uncertainty envelopes UK high streets January 18, 2019 Retailers suffered a weak end to 2018 as Brexit uncertainty saw shoppers spending less in the face of Brexit uncertainty, the latest data shows today. Sales fell 0.9 per cent month on month in December as shoppers kept their purses closed, the Office for National Statistics data revealed. Read more: All the high street giants [...]
Eurozone inflation falls to eight-month low led by slower rise in energy prices January 17, 2019 Eurozone annual inflation fell to its lowest level in eight months in December, led by a slower rise in energy prices. The single currency bloc’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) met market forecasts as it dropped to 1.6 per cent from 1.9 per cent in November, the EU’s statistical office Eurostat said today. But the month-on-month [...]
UK CPI falls close to a two-year low on lower fuel and air travel prices January 16, 2019 The UK's Consumer Price Index was 2.1 per cent in December, falling to a 22-month low driven by falls in petrol prices and a year-on-year drop in air fares. Falling fuel prices contributed a 0.14 percentage points drop in the 12-month rate, as the price of petrol in December last year was the lowest since [...]
US inflation falls for first time since March as petrol prices drop January 11, 2019 Cheaper prices at the pumps pushed down US inflation for the first time in nine months in December. Statistics released today show the country’s consumer price index (CPI) dropped 0.1 percentage points last month to 1.9 per cent, making December’s fall the first since March. However, when stripping out changes to the price of food [...]
Retail round up: What’s happening on the high street? January 11, 2019 Not as bad as it could have been. That’s the general feeling about high street performance over Christmas after major retailers and the supermarkets published their festive figures this week. The British Retail Consortium says that 2018 was the worst Christmas for retails for 10 years but, as ever, the figures show there are winners [...]
Greene King toasts record Christmas trading amid cost-cutting plans January 8, 2019 Pub chain Greene King today recorded strong sales growth over Christmas and the New Year as it cashed in on festive drinking. Greene King said like-for-sale sales over the last two weeks rose 10.9 per cent, while Christmas day sales hit a record £7.7m. The chain, which operates almost 3,000 pubs, restaurants and hotels across [...]
Eurozone inflation falls to its lowest rate in eight months as business output crashes January 4, 2019 A fall in oil prices saw eurozone inflation crash to an eight-month low in December as business activity fell to a four-year low, it emerged today. Inflation for the 19-country area stood at 1.6 per cent in the last month of 2018, down from 1.9 per cent in November and the lowest recorded since April, [...]
Brexit fears see job creation fall to 29-month low January 4, 2019 Brexit uncertainty weighed on the UK’s services sector at the end of 2018 as it marked the close of the year with some of its weakest growth in recent times, while job creation fell to a 29-month low. The services sector posted a 51.2 score for December in the closely-followed IHS Markit/CIPS services purchasing managers’ [...]
Shop price inflation grows in December despite Christmas discounting January 4, 2019 Shop price inflation rose in December as festive discounting failed to keep prices down for stretched consumers. Overall inflation rose to 0.3 per cent last month, up from 0.1 per cent in November and the highest rate of inflation since April 2013. It is only the fourth month of inflation in the last five years, according [...]