Long awaited free-trade treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been agreed by the US, Japan and 10 other nations October 5, 2015 The US, Japan and 10 other Pacific countries have agreed a free trade deal that covers around 40 per cent of the world's economy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will reduce trade barriers between member countries and introduce common standards for goods, influencing everything from the price of cheese to pick-up trucks and cancer treatments. Negotiations [...]
Shared Ownership Week: So what is it anyway? October 5, 2015 Like the sound of Shared Ownership, but not sure how it works? Katie Bond, director of housing association Notting Hill Home Ownership (NHHO), is here to set the record straight for Shared Ownership Week (5-11 October). What is a Shared Ownership scheme and who is it meant to help? Shared Ownership is where you [...]
A place in the sun: Your guide to buying a home in Spain October 5, 2015 Many Londoners have a hankering to buy a second home abroad, and Spain ranks as one of the most popular places to own one. There are officially 750,000 British people living in Spain, and thousands more who own property but live in the UK. Spain’s economy was hit hard by the financial crisis, and [...]
Breaking the Bank: What will rising UK interest rates mean for P2P lending? October 5, 2015 The Bank of England will soon need to rediscover the use of its trigger finger and fire the starting gun on interest rate rises. Still expected to be slow and steady, tightening policy after nearly seven years of ultra cheap money will nevertheless have a sizeable impact on everything and everyone, pushing up borrowing costs [...]
The Debt Emporium: An investor’s guide to debt-based crowdfunding October 5, 2015 Thanks to a growing array of alternative finance platforms, the funding landscape for SMEs has improved dramatically in the last five years. The 2014 Moving Mainstream report from Cambridge’s Judge Business School showed that debt-based crowdfunding platforms alone enabled companies to raise over £1bn – and that’s just in the UK. But the advent of [...]
Pensions reform: Lump sums don’t mean Lamborghinis as Britain’s savers are still being prudent October 5, 2015 Pensioners were expected to be buying up Lamborghinis in droves this summer, after landmark pension freedoms came into effect in April. The new system allows people over 55 to take some – or even all – of their pension as a lump sum. It wipes away old restrictions which only let retirees have a [...]
Powder White’s co-founder Fraser Ewart-White on ski lifts, Khazakstan and the credit crunch October 4, 2015 When do the best business ideas come to you? For Fraser Ewart-White, it was while swinging on a chair-lift 1500m above sea level. Ewart-White had recently left his job as head of buying at the entertainment company Blockbuster, turning his back on his career to study for an MBA and, among other great ambitions, to [...]
Secure Income Reit completes £903m loan deal October 2, 2015 Secure Income Reit, led by chairman Martin Moore, has today completed a £903m loan deal in a move that paves the way for the company to start paying out dividends to shareholders. The fixed-rate loan will last 10 years and is secured against the group's £1,3bn property portfolio. Today marks the third drawdown of a three-facility arrangement. The third and final loan is valued at £315.6m, [...]
Supermoon, Uber’s drama and Jeremy Corbyn’s 80s flashback: Here’s what got us talking this week October 2, 2015 It was the week in which everyone saw red – from water on the red planet to the rare super-blood moon to a sudden surge in the popularity of Donald Trump Halloween wigs. And, of course, the Labour Party conference. In fact, the only one not wearing rose-coloured glasses was Burger King, which unveiled a [...]
High stamp duty on prime property may prove self-defeating for the government October 2, 2015 In the days that followed the Conservative Party victory in May, the widely-held assumption was that normal service would resume at the prime end of the London housing market with double-digit annual growth. It was a proposition that never looked likely for several reasons, the principal one being a rise in stamp duty last [...]