Free banking will soon be a thing of the past October 7, 2010 IN AN environment of persistently low interest rates, it has become increasingly hard to find a free current account that pays any credit interest at all, according to personal finance information website Moneyfacts.co.uk. Its research, which was published earlier this week, showed that 55 per cent of current accounts on the market pay no credit [...]
ENTREPRENEURS NEWS | IN BRIEF February 24, 2011 A Dragon in Romania The founding Dragons’ Den panellist Doug Richard has been drafted in by Romania’s Post-Privatisation Foundation (PPF) to deliver an intensive training course which aims to help Romanian entrepreneurs turn their ideas into fast-growth successful businesses. The program will train 250 Romanian entrepreneurs and thanks to the PPF, the School for Start-ups [...]
At a glance: All the crucial points from Osborne’s Budget for Growth March 23, 2011 THE ECONOMY/PUBLIC FINANCES The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has revised its growth forecast for the economy, blaming higher-than-expected inflation as a result of recent global commodity price shocks and the weather-affected final quarter of 2010. GDP growth has been revised down to 1.7 per cent in 2011. Growth is expected to peak at 2.9 [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 20, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES CHINA TO ALTER TAXES IN ATTEMPT TO CUT WEALTH GAP China is to lift the exemption threshold for personal income tax payments in an effort to redistribute the spoils of rapid growth and reduce a widening wealth gap. The level at which Chinese citizens must pay income tax will be raised from Rmb2,000 [...]
Watch out for Osborne’s foreign currency plans March 29, 2011 A FEW ears pricked up on budget day when George Osborne announced a surprising and potentially expensive plan to rebuild Britain’s foreign currency reserves. There are two methods of executing this plan. The first is to print sterling to buy foreign currency. This could be regarded as quantitative easing (QE) by another method. Indeed, it [...]
The man who’s locking horns with indecisive EU regulators April 17, 2011 MENTION Brussels to any senior London-based insurer and you will always get the same reaction: anger and exasperation. With just over 18 months to go before the introduction of Solvency II, the insurance industry’s equivalent of the new Basel III banking rules, European regulators have still not produced a framework that properly reflects the business [...]
Asia narrows US lead in list of billionaires March 9, 2011 ASIA churned out 105 billionaires last year, narrowing the US’s lead in the Forbes magazine annual list of billionaires. The Asia-Pacific region now has 300 billionaires, versus the US’s 413, collectively valued at $1.3 trillion and $1.5 trillion respectively. China now has 115 billionaires, versus India’s 55. The list set a new record for being [...]
Naguib Kheraj leaves Lazard February 17, 2011 HIGH-flying banker Naguib Kheraj yesterday walked away from his chief executive role at Lazard after just six weeks in the post. Kheraj, a former JPMorgan Cazenove chief executive and Barclays finance director, resigned as chief executive of Lazard International to focus on philanthropic work. His departure surprised many in the City as much as his [...]
Consumer confidence falls again July 29, 2010 Consumer confidence fell for the fifth successive month in July, according to the latest barometer from GfK NOP published today. The overall consumer confidence index dropped three points to -22 with falls in consumers’ expectations for their personal finances over the next year, the current general economic situation and the economy over the next 12 [...]
Memo to Osborne: don’t tax the City too much February 23, 2011 JEAN Baptiste Colbert, King Louis IVth’s legendary finance minister, didn’t mess about. To uphold standards in the cloth industry, he issued an edict that any merchant found peddling dodgy material three times would be tied up in public with the offending produce. Like George Osborne, Colbert inherited a fiscal catastrophe, and attempted Herculean feats to [...]