UK dividends won’t recover until 2025 at the earliest after bruising year January 20, 2021 UK dividends are unlikely to recover until 2025 at the earliest after a catastrophic year for payouts amid the pandemic. Eight years of growth wiped off UK dividends last year as companies started to make cuts at the beginning of the second quarter following the outbreak of coronavirus. Payouts fell 44 per cent to £61.9bn [...]
CMC Markets continues winning streak during pandemic following record results January 20, 2021 CMC Markets performed well in the third quarter of its 2021 financial year, though numbers were down slightly following a bumper start to the year. Client retention in Q3 2021 stood in excess of 80 per cent, but below levels reported in H1 2021. In the year so far the online trading and B2B platform [...]
UK inflation doubles in a month as transport prices rise January 20, 2021 UK inflation doubled in December as prices rose during the festive period, the Office for National Statistics has announced. Prices in the run-up to Christmas were up 0.6 percent compared to a year earlier and rose from 0.3 per cent in November. Higher prices for transport, recreation and culture were flagged by statisticians, despite food [...]
HSBC set to close 82 branches as customers go online January 19, 2021 HSBC is set to close 82 of its branches across the UK amid a takeup in online and telephone banking. The high street bank announced plans to shut the branches between April and September of this year but redundancies would be minimal as it looked to redeploy employees to “suitable nearby locations”. The decision reflected [...]
‘We want to be the regional magic circle firm,’ says Knights CEO January 19, 2021 Regional law firm Knights saw revenues jumped by some £14m in the second half of 2020, up to £46.2m from £31.9m in H1, and the positive year has only fuelled the firm’s ambitions. The promising results were in part delivered in part by the successful remote acquisitions of Shulmans, ASB and Fraser Brown, and the [...]
Ethereum 2.0 staking, a worthwhile investment? January 19, 2021 Background The Ethereum network today is overrun with traffic, causing transaction fees to spike to levels that are not affordable for many use cases. This is partially due to the success of DeFi projects, where users don’t mind paying the high transaction fees because of the financial value of the transactions being made. (In Ethereum, [...]
Health secretary Matt Hancock self-isolating after NHS app alert January 19, 2021 Matt Hancock is self-isolating after receiving an alert from the NHS coronavirus contact tracing app. The health secretary today said he had been “pinged” by the app and would not be leaving his house until Sunday. “This self-isolating is perhaps the most important part of all the social distancing,” he said in a video posted [...]
Experian reports ‘better-than-expected’ quarter as revenue grows January 19, 2021 Credit scoring giant Experian (EXPN) reported a better-than-expected third quarter after a strong performance by its North America division. Total revenue at constant exchange rates grew 10 per cent in the three months to the end of December. Experian’s North America and Latin America divisions grew 11 and 16 per cent respectively, but the UK [...]
What next for social media regulation in the post-Trump world? January 19, 2021 Two weeks on from the storming of the US Capitol the social media excision of the 45th US President is so extensive, the holder of the most powerful office in the world is presently unable to log in to Pinterest to create a mood board for his impending house move. His exclusion has drawn condemnation from [...]
Rishi Sunak mulls over a UK corporation tax hike in March Budget January 18, 2021 Rishi Sunak is reportedly considering raising corporation tax in the upcoming March Budget in a bid to pay off some of the UK government’s Covid spending bill. The chancellor is also now expected to increase business support in the 3 March Budget by extending the furlough scheme and Covid business loan programme. Senior government sources [...]