Food and drink deals spike as big firms look to strengthen positions January 23, 2025 M&A deal volumes in the food and drink sector saw a double digit rise last year, as buyers targeted undervalued companies in a bid to strengthen their positions in the market. Total deal volume rose to 151 deals in 2024, a 29.1 per cent increase from 117 deals in the previous year, while the total [...]
‘Find me unwinding in my jacuzzi’: The life of Planet Organic founder Renee Elliott January 23, 2025 Planet Organic founder Renee Elliott built a health food empire in London. She tells us how she did it and what her life's like now.
Could the Bank of England push the UK into recession? January 23, 2025 As the Bank of England scrambles to unwind the disastrous effects of quantitative easing, the hidden costs of this policy are becoming clear, says Damian Pudner Quantitative easing (QE) has long been the Bank of England’s monetary policy nuclear option. Launched in 2009 to save a collapsing financial system, it was supercharged during the pandemic, [...]
Spending cuts risk ‘doom loop’, ex-Bank of England economist warns January 22, 2025 Andy Haldane warned cutting government spending would be harmful for the UK’s longer term fiscal position, because it would weigh on growth. The Chancellor will receive fresh economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March which will take into account sluggish growth since the Budget and higher government borrowing costs. These forecasts [...]
Man behind Netflix’s Bank of Dave gets a ‘kick’ catching scammers, and thinks Gen Z has got work wrong January 22, 2025 You might not have heard of Dave Fishwick, but Bank of Dave – the Netflix biopic about the unlikely bank manager from Burnley – was one of the most Googled films of 2023. That same year it topped the streamer’s charts, and now a second installation is on Netflix. Fishwick grew up with “nothing” and [...]
Bank of England: Goldman Sachs expects deep interest rate cuts January 22, 2025 Markets are significantly underestimating the chance that the Bank of England will have to step up the pace of cutting interest rates, Goldman Sachs has argued. Traders anticipate just two interest rate cuts this year with one more cut priced in for 2026, which would leave the benchmark Bank Rate at 4.0 per cent. It [...]
PRA under pressure to cut red tape as growth plans fail to excite the City January 22, 2025 The banking regulator is under pressure to go further and faster in its efforts to cut red tape from the City after it outlined plans to boost the growth of firms within its remit last week. In a letter to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, the PRA, which sits within the Bank of England and [...]
London commuter towns named ‘financial resilience capitals’ of the UK January 22, 2025 From pension plans to retirement savings, new data has revealed the 'financial resilience capitals' of the UK.
Reeves has placed an uncertainty premium on the British economy January 22, 2025 Rachel Reeves promised to restore economic stability, but the outcome of her various actions has been to increase uncertainty, says Paul Ormerod Daniel Ellsberg, who died in 2023 in his 90s, was a true Renaissance Man. After a stellar career as an economics student at Harvard, he served in the Marines before working for the [...]
More borrowers will be paying off mortgage debt into their 70s January 21, 2025 In the first nine months of 2024, 22,103 mortgages with a term of at least 35 years were approved to people aged over 36.