NatWest tumbles to £351m loss in 2020 as bank shuts door on Irish market February 19, 2021 NatWest has today announced that it will pull out of its operations in the Republic of Ireland after reporting a £351m annual loss. The bank intends to withdraw from its Ulster Bank but operations will not be affected in Northern Ireland. It will exit the country following a strategic review and send $4.84bn worth of [...]
Property chiefs: Lockdown and end of stamp duty holiday push down house prices February 2, 2021 The most recent drop in house prices is primarily caused by the soon-to-end stamp duty holiday, combined with the UK’s third national lockdown, property professionals told City A.M. this morning. According to new figures, published by Nationwide earlier this morning, January saw property prices fall for the first time in six months as the end [...]
Virgin Money adds £18m fresh provisions for troubled loans February 2, 2021 Lender Virgin Money has set aside a further £18m this quarter to protect its balance sheet from potential loan losses, as it reported a “modest” increase in the number of customers needing additional support after exiting pandemic payment holidays. The new £18m this quarter is in addition to £726m the company is holding on its balance sheet [...]
Exclusive: ‘Banks should deliver the same experience as Amazon and Netflix’, says Ezbob CEO January 21, 2021 After a year that was hugely disrupted by Covid-19 and the entire economy and its workforce moved online, City A.M. sat down with Tomer Guriel, CEO of Mayfair-based Ezbob, which provides digital lending software to some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the City. A vaccine is being rolled out, so the City [...]
Covid-19 volatility boosts profits at investment bank Morgan Stanley, echoing rival Goldman Sachs January 20, 2021 Covid-19 volatility boosts profits at investment bank Morgan Stanley
The case for investing in financials January 7, 2021 Entire tomes have been devoted to investing in the financial services sector – hardly surprising when you consider its size, and therefore its significance to the world’s capital markets. To say the financial sector is large doesn’t do it justice. Of the total market capitalisation of the S&P 500, the world’s largest stock market index, [...]
Natwest buys Metro Bank’s £3bn mortgage portfolio December 18, 2020 Natwest is set to buy Metro Bank’s £3bn mortgage portfolio in a deal which will see 13,000 customers transferred over to the lender. The deal comes after the high street bank returned to profit after taking a £.21bn hit from the pandemic in the first half of the year. “Growing our mortgage book is an [...]
From Industrialized Yield Farming to Hydroponics December 16, 2020 Over the course of 2020 the liquidity locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has grown in rapid fashion with use cases such as crypto-backed lending, decentralized exchanges (DEX’s) and insurance bringing the Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi to its current peak ~$15 billion with the majority of this capital existing on the Ethereum blockchain. [...]
Barclays fined £26m for mistreatment of customers in arrears December 15, 2020 The UK’s financial watchdog has fined Barclays £26m for failures in its treatment of customers who fell into financial difficulties. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found that Barclays had mistreated some retail and small business customers who fell into arrears between April 2014 and December 2018. Read more: Parlez-vous Français? Paris’ finance sector gets ready [...]
UK housing market ‘to grow four per cent’ in 2021 December 14, 2020 British house prices are set to grow an average of four per cent in 2021, according to property website Rightmove, despite the looming end of a tax break and forecasts of rising unemployment. Rightmove said asking prices for property first advertised between 8 November and 5 December were 6.6 per cent higher than a year [...]