House prices turn upwards in London yet continue to slump in rest of the UK March 30, 2011 LONDON is the first UK region to register a rise in house prices for eight months, the Hometrack monthly national housing survey announced today. While prices across the UK fell by 0.1 per cent in March, in the capital they rose by 0.2 per cent. The upturn was driven by a 25 per cent increase [...]
Northern Rock to axe 680 jobs March 28, 2011 STATE-OWNED bank Northern Rock is to cut up to 680 jobs this year as it streamlines to cut costs before a return to the private sector. Newcastle-based Northern Rock said yesterday cost management was a key focus as it seeks to return to profit. The bank said economic and trading conditions were challenging for lenders [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 24, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS AT CENTRE OF LIBOR INQUIRY Barclays is emerging as a key focus of the US and UK regulatory probe into alleged rigging of benchmark interbank lending rates that are the reference point for $350,000bn in financial products, people familiar with the investigation said. Investigators are probing whether communications between the bank’s traders [...]
Lloyds beats lending targets March 23, 2011 Part-nationalised bank Lloyds Banking Group has met its targets for lending to businesses and for mortgages, it has announced. The high street lender extended £11.7bn in lending to small and mid-sized businesses and £37bn to larger companies in the year to February 2011, beating its annual target by £4.7bn. It also provided £23.5bn in gross [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 20, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES RIO PLANS RUSSIAN DIAMOND PUSH AS IT EYES ALROSA TIE-UP Rio Tinto is planning a push into Russian diamond mining, eyeing a tie-up with Alrosa, the state-owned miner, as the global industry looks ahead to rising demand from China amid tight supply constraints. The company declined to comment on its intentions or on [...]
Housing market “stuck in a rut” March 18, 2011 UK mortgage lending remained unchanged last month as the housing market is “stuck in a rut”, according to lenders. February’s gross lending figure of an estimated £9.5bn was almost identical to January’s £9.475 bn, according to new data published by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). “This is going to be a challenging year for [...]
Mortgage lending falls in January March 11, 2011 UK mortgage lending fell 29 per cent in January from December’s level, new data has shown. Just 28,500 loans were extended to property buyers, a fall of 12 per cent on January 2010, a report from the Council of Mortgage Lenders found. The fall is being attributed to “an unusual combination of factors” including public [...]
Northern Rock in £232m annual loss March 9, 2011 Northern Rock, the retail bank formed from the ashes of the lender that almost collapsed in the financial crisis, said it is preparing to return to the private sector after posting a £232m annual loss. State-owned Northern Rock , which manages new mortgages and savings, said the underlying loss for 2010, its first annual set [...]
Fixed mortgage rates increase March 7, 2011 The average rate of interest on a two-year fixed rate mortgage has increased to 4.59 per cent, its highest level in ten months, according to the Moneyfacts website. Yet tracker rates have dropped to 3.4 per cent, as lenders look to tempt mortgage holders onto deals that follow the central Bank rate of interest.
Over half of tenants see rents rising March 6, 2011 OVER half British tenants expect rents to rise over the next 12 months, a Rightmove survey revealed today. The proportion of tenants expecting a hike (52.6 per cent) dwarfed the four per cent of respondents who expect rents to fall. At the end of 2010, only 41.7 per cent anticipated an increase in rents. Restricted [...]