Business warns of threat to the capital from tax and caps December 10, 2012 TAX RATES, immigration caps and hand-wringing over airport capacity are causing London to suffer in a global race for competitiveness, according to the latest studies of financial centres around the world. A report from business group London First, seen by City A.M., shows that while the UK’s capital remains one of the world’s most attractive [...]
Retailers close 20 shops a day as value chains take their place October 17, 2012 BRITISH retailers closed more stores than they opened in the first half of the year, with around 20 shops a day pulling down their shutters, a study has revealed. The report, by PwC and the Local Data Company, examined 500 town centres in the UK and found toy shops, clothes and furniture retailers, jewellers, card [...]
Government slammed over flood insurance November 26, 2012 HEAVY rain continued to bring misery to swathes of the UK last night – as the government locked horns with the insurance industry over the future of domestic flood cover. A week of poor weather has closed dozens of major roads, while some rail links are out of action and hundreds of homes have been affected. [...]
Tory MPs demand pay and benefits freeze November 26, 2012 CUTTING entire government departments, freezing public sector pay and benefits, and allowing some cuts to NHS spending are the only ways to put state spending on a more sustainable long-term footing, Conservative MPs warned yesterday. It came as Arbuthnot Bank’s economic adviser Ruth Lea warned the government will not balance its budget until 2017, and [...]
What does the chancellor’s budget mean for you? December 5, 2012 Catherine Gannon, 50 Managing director of law firm Gannon Having started her own business 10 years ago, she earns around £100,000, though says this is getting more difficult to achieve, and while she has a share portfolio, she doesn’t have much in the way of a pension plan. Lives with her two children aged 10 [...]
Lehman fallout earns £500m for PwC so far April 12, 2012 THE FALLOUT from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy has netted its administrator PwC almost half a billion pounds in fees since it was appointed in September 2008. In a progress report released this morning, PwC said the total remuneration paid since the start of the proceeding had reached around £495m by the 12 March this year [...]
We need a new entrepreneurial revolution to rescue Britain November 15, 2012 IT is all too easy to despair about everything that is wrong with Britain. But one ray of light is our slow-burning, yet increasingly profound shift towards becoming a more entrepreneurial society. Britain counts 4.8m private firms, 99.9 per cent of which are small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Most are micro businesses. The rise of [...]
Row your boat gently down the Atlantic say three City boys November 25, 2012 THREE City boys and former army officers – Ed Janvrin, consultant at PwC, Alex Mackenzie, consultant at McKinney Rogers and Will Dixon, business manager at Barclays – stripped off their suits to row across the Atlantic in aid of charity Row2Recovery earlier this year. The mission, conceived by Janvrin and Mackenzie, was undertaken by a [...]
Is Sir Mervyn King too optimistic about the outlook for inflation in the medium term? November 14, 2012 YES John Hawksworth The Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) projection – that growth will pick up towards 2 per cent in the medium term – seems reasonable, assuming that there are no severe shocks from the Eurozone. But as the recovery becomes more sustained, its view that inflation will fall back to less than 2 per cent [...]
Is Sir Mervyn King too optimistic about the outlook for inflation in the medium term? November 14, 2012 YES John Hawksworth The Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) projection – that growth will pick up towards 2 per cent in the medium term – seems reasonable, assuming that there are no severe shocks from the Eurozone. But as the recovery becomes more sustained, its view that inflation will fall back to less than 2 per cent [...]