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 [...]
House prices fall at fastest rate for a year March 4, 2011 House prices fell 0.9 per cent in February, and by 2.8 per cent in the three months to February compared with a year ago, their fastest annual pace in more than a year, mortgage lender Halifax said on Friday. Halifax said that February’s drop offset a 0.8 per cent rise in January, but it expects [...]
What the other papers say this morning March 1, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES TOP 10 HEDGE FUNDS MAKE $28BN The top 10 hedge funds made $28bn for clients in the second half of last year, $2bn more than the net profits of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and HSBC combined, according to new data. Even the biggest of the hedge funds have only a [...]
Profits double at Persimmon as sales falter March 1, 2011 HOUSEBUILDER Persimmon warned yesterday that the weak mortgage market will continue to dampen sales this year, after almost doubling its pre-tax profit to £153.9m in 2010. While Persimmon sold 4.5 per cent more homes last year, the firm said completions tailed off towards the end of 2010 amid a tough mortgage market and economic fears. [...]