Carney getting ready for tough MPs’ questions February 3, 2013 INCOMING Bank of England governor Mark Carney will face a grilling from MPs on Thursday as an influential backbench committee makes the most of its first ever chance to question an incoming governor. Carney is set to take up the role this summer just as the Bank receives huge new powers over finance firms. That [...]
Santander sees UK growth but bad Spanish loans dent profits January 31, 2013 BANKING giant Santander claimed it has now moved beyond the Spanish housing crash, setting it up for solid growth in the coming years. Profits plunged 59 per cent to €2.205bn (£1.9bn) for 2012, in large part due to bad loan provisions of €6.14bn. But the bank’s UK arm reported gains, seeing post-tax profits rise four [...]
UK house prices back in black at end of January January 31, 2013 HOUSE prices swung back into growth in January, according to Nationwide’s latest house price index. Prices grew 0.5 per cent over the first month of 2013, the data showed, so that the index was back to almost exactly the same level as during January 2012. This marks the first time in 11 months the annual [...]
Customers have no incentive to punish mis-selling banks January 31, 2013 BANKS are embroiled in another “mis-selling” scandal, but we can be sure that customer behaviour won’t be affected. Few people will switch bank as a result. Regulation means we are indifferent to how our banks behave. Why? Because we know banks will always be fined for their faults, and we know we’ll always be compensated. [...]
UK house prices tick up in January January 31, 2013 UK house prices edged up in January, boosted by the Funding for Lending scheme, mortgage lender Nationwide said this morning. According to the lender, house values ticked up 0.5 per cent in January, although values were flat year on year, avoiding a decline for the first time since February. The typical UK home is now [...]
US growth falls off a cliff again January 30, 2013 THE US economy shrank unexpectedly in the final three months of 2012, official figures showed yesterday, taking markets and analysts by surprise. Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve responded by holding interest rates at record lows and continuing to print $85bn (£53.8bn) a month to buy government bonds and mortgage backed securities. Stocks dipped on [...]
New lending scheme fails to boost small businesses January 30, 2013 EFFECTIVE interest rates on new deposits have dived from 3.01 per cent in August, when the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) started to provide banks with cheap funds, to just 2.11 per cent in December, the Bank of England revealed. But the cheaper funds have started to divert cash back into the mortgage market, the [...]
Flawed government policy is wiping out struggling savers January 30, 2013 ONE of the government’s daftest policies is its underpinning of bank lending, a nationalisation of credit in all but name. The biggest losers from the funding for lending scheme have been savers. The effective average savings rate for new deposits has collapsed from 2.75 per cent in September to a miserable 2.11 per cent in [...]
Fed is ahead in the battle of the central banks January 29, 2013 ALTHOUGH the US has shown signs of rebounding, a scratch beneath the surface reveals that there are still issues dragging on the world’s largest economy. By historical standards, the pace of its current recovery is feeble. Research from Bank of America Merrill Lynch points out that the average annual growth rate of this recovery is [...]
MPs say coalition budgets have been omnishambles January 28, 2013 THE TREASURY Select Committee (TSC) this morning slammed coalition budget policy as unclear, confused and generating uncertainty. The MPs on the committee, led by Andrew Tyrie, used the report to criticise the government for turning the Autumn Statement into a second budget; for giving out unclear signals on plans for fuel duty; and for leaving [...]