B&Q owner Kingfisher’s profits slump nearly 40 per cent although Covid backlog may yet boost DIY chain’s bottom line March 21, 2023 B&Q owner Kingfisher reported a sales slowdown as the DIY giant felt the hit from Brits scaling back on home improvements. For the year ending 31 January 2023 Kingfisher, which also owns brands such as Screwfix, posted pre-tax profits of £611m, down 39.3 per cent from £1.7bn in the same period last year. As shoppers [...]
Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank chaos are symptoms of fragile banking system March 21, 2023 City folk around in 2007 must have been getting very twitchy over the last week. Some of the market moves were reminiscent of the early stages of the financial crisis once people clocked on to just how bad banks had messed up. Credit Suisse tumbled more than 30 per cent at one point. Its peers [...]
Panic, just a little bit of panic, was enough to drive Credit Suisse off a cliff March 21, 2023 After the collapse of SVB, investors and the bank's customers were on high alert for signs of shakiness and Credit Suisse was an obvious target as fears mounted over a wider, 2008-style banking crisis, writes Comment & Features Editor Sascha O’Sullivan
OBR blames optimistic economic forecasts on ‘volatile’ environment March 20, 2023 Overly optimistic economic forecasts are down to the “very volatile” nature of the UK in recent years, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chairman has said. The official Treasury watchdog was warned by Deutsche Bank analysts that it may have repeated its mistake of over-estimating growth figures and wiping out spending power. Speaking at a [...]
Strong performance on price of Bitcoin after stablecoins recover peg and staked Ether withdrawals near March 20, 2023 Data from CryptoCompare shows that the price of Bitcoin surged from around $22,000 at the beginning of last week to now change hands above the $28,000, with the cryptocurrency market having outperformed other assets over the last few days. Ethereum’s Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, moved similarly to BTC, jumping from around $1,580 [...]
Morrisons slashes prices AGAIN as supermarket attempts to woo Aldi and Lidl shoppers back to its aisles March 20, 2023 Morrisons is slashing prices for the third time in three months as it attempts to drag shoppers back from value retailers including Aldi and Lidl. The supermarket said it was cutting the prices of 460 items such as beef mince, cleaning products and fruit, in a move that followed on from a round of price [...]
Stagnant wages since 2008 financial crash means workers £11,000 worse off, BBC Panorama reveals March 20, 2023 Workers are £11,000 worse off per year due to 15 years of wage stagnation, according to the Resolution Foundation. In new figures shared with BBC Panorama, the think tank calculated that, had wages continued to grow at the pace seen before the 2008 financial crash, the average worker would make £11,000 more per year than [...]
American candy stores or retail hub? What might be next for Oxford Street March 19, 2023 It has been three years since the UK was plunged into its first-ever full scale lockdown – forcing the majority of stores in London’s West End to temporarily cease trading and arguably altering the state of physical retail forever. The pandemic forced once seemingly indestructible retailers such as Debenhams, Topshop, and Gap off Oxford Street, [...]
Explainer: Why are the SNP losing members? March 17, 2023 The Scottish National Party is losing members: this is the reality that the contenders to replace Nicola Sturgeon had to grapple with this week. The party said the current membership stands at 72,186. These will be the people who ultimately get to decide who becomes the new leader of the party. At the beginning of [...]
Pension pain: Savers who bought lifetime allowance ‘protection’ warned they may still find their tax-free lump sum capped March 17, 2023 Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s decision to scrap the pension lifetime allowance (LTA) in Wednesday’s Spring Budget, was heralded as an incentive for wealthier employees over 50 to stay in the workforce. But some pensions experts say for those who took out a form of LTA protection may still have to watch they do not go over [...]