High street names including Tesco and Greggs call on Tory leadership candidates to slash ‘shop tax’ August 9, 2022 A coalition of retailers including Morrisons, Greggs and Tesco, have called on the Conservative party leader candidates to slash business rates. The Retail Jobs Alliance has called on both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to pledge to cut business rates, which it said were “killing our high streets”. The group, consisting of Co-op, Greggs, Kingfisher, [...]
The Week in Review August 5, 2022 Bitcoin has been bouncing around a little over the last week, but always within its well established range around $22,000.
More than 3m UK households now live in fuel poverty as fears grow this number will double July 29, 2022 The chairwoman of the Committee on Fuel Poverty, Caroline Flint, said this morning close to 3.2m households are living in fuel poverty according to official statistics. “But those statistics were before these price increases happened and there are a number of organisations – National Energy Action and others – who are predicting it could double [...]
Hefty £1.5bn trading error legal charge erodes Barclays profits July 28, 2022 A £1.5bn legal charge for a trading error has eroded British bank Barclays’s profits, it announced today. Hefty litigation and regulatory costs to deal with selling too many financial products dealt a major blow to Barclays’s first half earnings. Pre-tax profits dropped by a quarter to £3.7bn in the six months to June, down from [...]
London markets jump ahead of expected big US Federal Reserve rate rise July 27, 2022 London markets shrugged off bets on the US Federal Reserve hiking rate steeply later today to jump during opening exchanges. The capital’s premier FTSE 100 index added 0.43 per cent to reach 7,337.93 points, while the domestically-focused mid-cap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, increased 0.07 per [...]
IMF economy warning reverses FTSE 100 gains despite Unilever’s best efforts July 26, 2022 A bleak set of projections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pegging UK growth as the worst in the G7 weighed on London markets today. The capital’s premier FTSE 100 index remained unchanged, while the domestically-focused mid-cap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, dropped 1.18 per cent [...]
UK sinks to bottom of G7 growth league amid global economic downturn July 26, 2022 The global economy could be hurtling toward one of the sharpest slowdowns in recent memory, with the UK plummeting to the bottom of the G7 growth league, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned today. A full shut off of Russian gas flows to Europe and more upside inflation shocks would plunge growth into among the [...]
CBI: Consumer spending smashes expectations, but deeper dip may be on the way July 26, 2022 Consumer spending is defying expectations and holding up better than feared amid sky high inflation, a new survey published today reveals. Retail sales volumes dipped to net a balance of minus four per cent this month, slightly lower than June, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). But, the marginal drop was much better [...]
Reckless greenwashing has tarnished faith in the private sector’s role in social issues July 26, 2022 AFTER the past month anyone might be forgiven for struggling to remember what last year’s biggest priorities were. While political attention has been whisked away from the stark problems we face, those problems have not helpfully agreed to go on standby. If anything, they have intensified – and nowhere is this more evident than the [...]
Inflation shock sends chill through British factories, but hiring holds up July 25, 2022 A softening in the UK economy caused by surging inflation has clamped down on UK factories, a closely watched survey published today reveals. A net balance of six per cent of British manufacturers posted new order growth over the last three months, down sharply from 25 per cent in the three months to June, according [...]