UK house prices: Will the surge last or is it a bubble? September 2, 2020 UK house prices surged to an all-time high last month as pent-up lockdown demand and chancellor Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty cut stimulated the market. The average UK house price rose to a record £224,123 in August, up from £220,935 in July. Bombastic estate agents greeted the figures with glee, variously describing UK house prices as [...]
Raise sick pay and extend furlough, Royal Society urges government August 14, 2020 Statutory sick pay should be increased and the furlough scheme extended, according to a new report by the Royal Society. The research has suggested it would be the best trade-off between public health and economic risk moving forward. It argues that health and economic data should be combined to produce the best economic outcome at [...]
Just Group shares jump as profit survives pandemic August 13, 2020 Just Group’s shares leapt today after it posted slightly higher profit for the first six months of 2020 today despite the pandemic. The figures Underlying operating profit rose £3m to £117m year on year for the first half of 2020. Profit from active life insurance policies shot up 25 per cent year on year to [...]
M&G tables £191m bid in UK Mortgages hostile takeover August 13, 2020 M&G today said it has tabled a bid of roughly £191m for UK Mortgages Limited, marking its final offer in a hostile takeover effort. The asset manager, which is acting on behalf of its M&G Specialty Finance Fund, said it has ramped up its offer by 3p to 70p per share — an increase of [...]
Bubble trouble: Lessons from three centuries of boom and bust August 6, 2020 While 2020 has seen its fair share of market turbulence, it has some way to go to match the volatility of 1720. This month marks the 300th anniversary of the peak of the South Sea Bubble — one of the first financial bubbles, and still one of history’s greatest. The bubble began when the South [...]
Lloyds swings to loss as it sets aside extra £2.4bn for bad loans July 30, 2020 UK banking giant Lloyds swung to a £600m pre-tax loss for the first half of the year today as coronavirus cost it an extra £2.4bn. The provision for loan losses was bigger than the £1.5bn analysts had anticipated. It took total provisions for the first half of the year to £3.8bn. Read more: Barclays braces [...]
Stamp duty cut makes UK buyers among Europe’s lowest taxpayers July 27, 2020 The government’s emergency stamp duty cut means buyers in the UK now pay among the lowest in tax in Europe, even on a prime property. British buyers are now paying just 1.93 per cent of a property’s value in tax compared to the European average of 4.53 per cent, a new study by accountancy network [...]
M&G Investments has eyes on UK Mortgages July 20, 2020 M&G Investment Management is pursuing a bid for UK Mortgages on behalf of one of its managed funds, M&G Specialty Finance Fund. M&G said it had made several approaches to the listed UK Mortgages on behalf of the fund. It said all of the proposals, including the latest one at 67p per share valuing the [...]
Stamp duty holiday: What does it mean for the UK housing market? July 7, 2020 In a “mini-budget” spring statement tomorrow chancellor Rishi Sunak is expected to announce a range of measures to boost the economy which has been ravaged by the coronavirus crisis. As part of the package the chancellor is reportedly planning to cut stamp duty for properties worth up to £500,000 in a bid to reinvigorate the [...]
US pending home sales post record jump in May June 29, 2020 Contracts to buy previously-owned homes in the US rose dramatically in May, posting the biggest rebound on record as the American housing market began to recover from the Covid-19 hit. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said that its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, surged 44.3 per cent in May [...]