Brand Index: Economic confidence set to determine the 2015 election March 18, 2014 SINCE YouGov started tracking consumer confidence in 2009, the number of people expecting their household financial situation to get worse has always far outstripped the upbeat group of Britons who expected things to get better. This split reached its worst in 2011 when for a few months more than half, or 55 per cent, of [...]
After years of political vandalism, UK pensions are on the mend June 2, 2014 BRITONS don’t save enough. The fact that we don’t put enough money aside for a rainy day, for our retirement or to finance long-term care, is one of our great weaknesses. There was a time when the UK was able to boast that we had the best pensions system in Europe; those days are long [...]
Bubble trouble: We’re sacrificing financial stability for a growth illusion June 12, 2014 THERE is a growing conflict at the heart of economic policymaking – and a rising danger. The risk is that financial stability is being sacrificed on the altar of growth, and that memories of the financial crisis are growing short. Consider these recent disparate examples. Mario Draghi has boldly gone where no G7 central banker [...]
City A.M.’s bumper Autumn Statement preview December 3, 2013 As chancellor George Osborne gets set to unveil this year's Autumn statement on Thursday, we've pulled together all the expected announcements, and what others are hoping for. Ladbrokes have 11/5 odds on the speech to run for 45 to 50 minutes (it's scheduled to start at 11.15am). You'll get 6/4 odds on the speech running [...]
Polo maverick riding out the storm June 2, 2014 As thousands of fans head to Hurlingham for Polo in the Park this weekend, City A.M. chats to its founder, City veteran Daniel Fox-Davies AMONG the sun seekers flocking to Hurlingham Park this weekend for the sixth annual Polo in the Park will be one man with a good reason to smile – the event’s [...]
Bottom Line: Beware of history repeating itself February 11, 2014 CAST your mind back to October 2008. As the financial crisis took hold, governments across the world unveiled multi-billion bank recapitalisation plans, while central banks simultaneously slashed interest rates to record lows and the FTSE plunged lower – falling a full 10 per cent in one single session. Over in Ukraine, meanwhile, the hryvnia was [...]
Crazed global investors have become gluttons for punishment April 10, 2014 CREDITORS are strange beasts: they appear to have virtually zero memory, to be gluttons for punishment and to embrace rewards for failure. There can be no other possible explanation for Greece’s astonishingly successful return to the bond markets yesterday – apart, that is, from the fact that there is clearly far too much cash burning [...]
Why Barclays thinks European investors are missing out to US peers March 24, 2014 At the moment, European equities are, as a whole, pretty cheap. And what’s more, those with higher leverage are even cheaper. That’s according to Barclays, whose note today, “Learning to live with leverage”, details why it thinks European equity investors are still underestimating the impact of improved fixed income markets. The bank thinks there’s a [...]
Why the housing crisis is clobbering London businesses February 24, 2014 THE HOUSING crisis is the biggest challenge facing London. For the first time ever, it is now Londoners’ top concern. For low and middle income Londoners, home ownership is increasingly out of reach, rents consume an ever increasing percentage of their income, and homelessness is rising. But the crisis is also seriously damaging the competitiveness [...]
We must help poor kids – not subsidise middle class parents September 23, 2013 SOMETIMES I despair at this government’s inconsistencies, internal contradictions and intellectual incoherence. It keeps telling us that it wants to save money to reduce the deficit, and then splashes out £600m on a new entitlement in the form of free school meals for all under-8s. Poor children are already eligible for free school meals, which [...]