House building up despite fall in the capital June 25, 2015 HOUSE building in London slowed in the run up to May’s General Election, despite an increase across the UK as a whole. The number of new homes registered in Greater London dropped to 7,045 in the three months ending 31 May, according to the figures released today by the National House Building Council. It marks [...]
Chancellor George Osborne and City minister Harriet Baldwin on why China is key to securing London’s future September 22, 2015 This is a critical moment in Britain’s relationship with China. The government is clear – we want to build strong links with every part of China and recent volatility should not and will not put us off. Instead, it should drive us forward. We must seek to integrate China’s financial markets with our own, [...]
Buy-to-let enthusiasm can drive new supply if we demolish housing barriers July 28, 2015 It was at the time of another landmark Budget – Nigel Lawson’s in 1988 – that the UK’s rental market as we know it first began to emerge. The Housing Act’s deregulation measures of the same year, notably liberalising rents, set the scene for rapid growth in the private rented sector. This was fuelled by [...]
Morrisons follows Lidl and pledges to pay above National Living Wage September 29, 2015 Morrisons has followed in the steps of German discounter Lidl after announcing a 20 per cent pay hike for its staff in line with the new Living Wage. The supermarket, which is striving to turn itself around after years of declining sales, said more than 90,000 staff across all age brackets would benefit from a [...]
How to overcome the SME alt fi knowledge gap December 3, 2015 There has been much talk about the dearth of traditional bank loans to SMEs since the credit crunch, with the conventional narrative increasingly detached from reality as market confidence and conditions improve. But this jaded dialogue has disguised another issue: the rapid and seemingly unrelenting decline of the small business overdraft. In fact, a [...]
Crazy markets, Night Tube called off and Jeremy Corbyn goes off the rails: Here’s what got us talking this week August 28, 2015 It was the week in which everything got a bit trippy: the markets went bananas. The South Bank went psychedelic. Someone discovered a Nazi train full of gold (allegedly). And after 60 years of rivalry, Burger King finally proposed a truce with McDonald's… What got us talking 1. Up, down, up, down… Who said August was [...]
London’s financial sector set to lead demand for new workers June 28, 2015 THE FINANCIAL services sector is expected to drive London’s professional sector hiring over the next six months, recruiter Robert Half said today. Financial services firms are keener than others to take on more staff, with 56 per cent of them saying they will be looking to fill new roles during the second half the year. [...]
Generation Rent needs to stop obsessing about owning a home: renting is not a social curse July 22, 2015 Renting may be becoming the norm for large swathes of the UK’s population, certainly the under-40s, but a fundamental mindset change still needs to take place away from ingrained assumptions owning a home is preferable to renting it. For many the idea of lifelong renting is something to strive away from at all [...]
Is a specialist MBA a sensible option? Funding may be easier to secure but you’ll end up tied down August 27, 2015 From aviation and shipping to CSR and music, MBA students are no longer limited to choosing unspecialised programmes which lack technical depth and insight. Long favoured in countries like India, where booming industries like healthcare had to recruit capable managers quickly, specialist MBAs have grown in popularity in recent years. So are they the [...]
Including peer-to-peer lending in the new innovative finance Isa will provide boost for millions of Brits August 26, 2015 Something momentous has happened to the UK peer-to-peer lending industry, as the government finally confirmed its plans to introduce a new type of Isa covering peer-to-peer loans. This boost for the sector comes a decade after my company Zopa pioneered the concept back in 2005. Read more: Peer-to-peer lending isn’t shadow banking – it’s now [...]