Car Giant drives into the red but sees more models leave the showrooms November 16, 2009 CAR GIANT, the west London-based vehicle warehouse, plunged into loss-making territory last year, it emerged yesterday. The company was down £57,000 compared to profit in 2007 of £2.4m, despite increasing the number of used cars it sold by three per cent. It shifted nearly 50,000 hatchbacks and saloons over 12 months against a backdrop of [...]
Shoe Zone mergers kick the crunch November 15, 2009 SHOE ZONE, the bargain retailer that saved the Stead & Simpson and Shoe Express chains from administration, recorded an £8.1m pre-tax profit last year. Although overall operating profit was down from £8m to £6.9m, accounts show the company’s recent acquisitions – Stead & Simpson, which it snatched from the jaws of closure and Shoefayre, the [...]
BUSINESS LUMINARIES TOAST THEIR SUCCESS November 10, 2009 IT’S one thing to see the chancellor of the exchequer give up an entire evening to sit through a business awards ceremony, but quite another when he manages to have the audience in stitches during his speech as well. That’s right, folks: it seems that 18 months of surviving on a few hours sleep a [...]
CML: breakup of banks won’t lead to more lending November 10, 2009 MORTGAGE lenders have warned that the government’s banks breakup will fail to stimulate lending and even predict “stagnation” in the housing market next year. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) poured cold water on hopes that the carve up of RBS and Lloyds and the resurrection of brands like Williams & Glyn’s and Trustee Savings [...]
House prices still rising but sellers return November 9, 2009 SELLERS are slowly returning to the property market but confidence is underpinning further house price rises, according to a survey of estate agents published today. The latest monthly survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) showed that the net balance of surveyors reporting rising prices over the past three months surged to 34 [...]
ECONOMIC DIARY November 8, 2009 Monday 2 NovemberGermany:September imports and exports (7am)September trade balance (7am)September industrial production (11am) Tuesday 3 NovemberUK:October RICS house pricebalance (12am)BRC October retail sales (12am)September trade balance (9.30am)September DCLG UK houseprices (9.30am) US:Fed’s Lockhart speaks on US economic outlook (2.15pm) Germany: November ZEW survey on economic sentiment and [...]
Q&A: BUYING November 5, 2009 Camilla DellMANAGING PARTNER AT BLACK BRICKQ. Dear Camilla, I am in the process of buying a house and my surveyor has found some structural problems. Should I be worried? Can I negotiate the price down in order to pay for these faults? At what point should I pull out? A. You should talk to your [...]
Wimpey set to hike house prices in 2010 November 4, 2009 HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey is set to hike its house prices next year after yesterday reporting it had sold all the homes it targeted for 2009. The group said the average selling price for private homes has already jumped nine per cent higher in the 12 weeks to 4 November than the £177,670 it reported in [...]
Northern Rock unveils surge in mortgage loans November 4, 2009 NORTHERN Rock saw improved trading in the third quarter, with encouraging trends on bad loans, and forecast a “significant improvement” in the second half of the year. But the state-owned lender, which is being split into two in readiness for a sale, warned that conditions in the mortgage and housing markets remained subdued. “House price [...]
Wimpey set to hike house prices in 2010 November 4, 2009 HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey is set to hike its house prices next year after yesterday reporting it had sold all the homes it targeted for 2009. The group said the average selling price for private homes has already jumped nine per cent higher in the 12 weeks to 4 November than the £177,670 it reported in [...]