Nationwide pulls sales of mortgages for small deposit holders March 31, 2020 Nationwide is temporarily pulling its mortgage offering for low-deposit borrowers including first-time buyers as Britain’s biggest building society grapples with the impact of coronavirus on the housing market. Nationwide said that from Tuesday it would withdraw all fixed-rate and tracker mortgages above 75% loan-to-value (LTV) from sale for remortgage, first-time buyers, and new house purchases. [...]
Lloyds first quarter profit crashes 95 per cent on coronavirus April 30, 2020 Lloyds Banking Group posted a huge 95 per cent fall in profit for the first quarter of 2020 today as the coronavirus crisis took hold in the UK. Profit before tax slumped to £74m from £1.6bn the previous year as Lloyds took a massive impairment charge of £1.43bn as it expects bad loans to mount [...]
Soaring oil prices fuel London markets October 5, 2021 Soaring oil prices fuelled industrial megacaps this morning, pulling London markets away from yesterday’s losses. The capital’s premier index added 0.60 per cent to reach 7,052.75 points during the first couple hours of trading today. The likes of Shell and BP were boosted this morning by oil prices reaching a seven-year high, climbing above $80 [...]
The City View: Victoria Scholar on rising prices, unemployment and retail sales data; and XR cause Lloyd’s of London HQ shutdown April 12, 2022 Today Andy Silvester talks to Victoria Scholar, Head of Investment at Interactive Investor. They go through some of the week’s economics data on GDP, unemployment, retail sales, and talk trading updates. They discuss the latest from ASOS, Deliveroo, and EasyJet: ASOS is facing a raft of headwinds, as investors lose confidence in the online retailer; [...]
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to pay interns to quarantine in hotels June 13, 2021 Budding bankers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan forced to quarantine in hotels before they can begin their City careers will have their costs covered by the banks. The Wall Street titans are among the major lenders preparing to welcome another intake of new starters in the middle of the pandemic. But many of the [...]
City watchdog demands banks explain similar overdraft pricing January 28, 2020 The City watchdog has demanded that high street lenders explain why they have aligned their new overdraft rates at around 40 per cent following a rule change. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will from April ban banks from charging more for unarranged overdrafts, in response to complaints that such fees were regularly 10 times as [...]
FCA explores new rules to block UK high street bank closures August 10, 2021 The Financial Conduct Authority is reportedly looking into new rules that would give it the power to stop banks from closing high street branches, in a bid to ensure consumers have continued access to cash. In a consultation last month, the Treasury said it was considering new legislation that would give the UK’s financial regulator [...]
The City View: Musk on cusp of Twitter buy, and global markets down April 25, 2022 Today Andy Silvester talks to Jack Barnett, City A.M.’s Economics and Markets reporter. They go through the global market dip and why China’s zero-Covid lockdowns are concerning investors; bank earnings for Q1; and new ONS data showing that 9 in 10 households have recorded an uptick in their cost of living. And in the news, [...]
What are the top FTSE 100 stocks to keep an eye on as the index begins to recover? March 22, 2022 Two years ago today, the FTSE 100 index closed at 5,190 points, after its 32% covid-19 pandemic-induced crash since 17 January 2020. But even as the Russia-Ukraine war rages, the UK’s premier index is back to 7,405 points, only slightly down from its 7,611 February high. And with oil, inflation, and interest rates rising, value investors are now [...]
Lloyds Banking Group and Halifax customers hit by IT problems | City A.M. July 20, 2018 Customers of Lloyds Banking Group have been struggling to move their money today after problems with the bank’s faster payments system. The system is used to process telephone, mobile, internet and standing order payments. Read more: TSB customers hit by further mobile banking outages In a Twitter post the bank said: “We are currently experiencing [...]