New stamp duty rules annihilated buy-to-let mortgage borrowing in January March 14, 2017 The amount borrowed by prospective landlords fell 16 per cent in the year to January, as strict new rules on buy-to-let homes took their toll. Figures by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) showed would-be landlords borrowed £800m to buy new homes in January, down from £1.4bn the year before, and £900m in December. The [...]
Melissa Morris wants to save the NHS one billion pounds a year | City A.M. April 20, 2018 Depending on who you ask, the UK’s National Health Service is one of two things. Either, it’s the pride of a nation and envy of the world, which must be protected at all costs. Or, it’s a bureaucratic relic, consistently lagging behind most comparable systems in terms of health outcome, desperate for reform. Since its [...]
UK M&A deals tail off as post-Brexit vote reality causes sentiment to weaken according to EY October 9, 2017 After a post-Brexit spike, the number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the UK has begun to tail off as deal sentiment weakens. According to EY, the volume of M&A deals completed in the first nine months of this year slipped by 11 per cent compared to 2016 to 2,316. On the flip side, the [...]
London house prices: First-time buyers pay £91,000 deposit as fewer get on the property ladder in 2015, according to Halifax January 11, 2016 First-time home buyers needed an average deposit of £91,409 to buy a house in the capital last year, according to figures from a major British lender. The figures, published this morning by Halifax, showed London deposits were nearly three times the national average at £32,927. The deposits paid by first-time buyers nationally rose 13 per [...]
Housebuilder share prices: McCarthy & Stone share price falls along with Berkeley Group, Persimmon, Barratt and others on leasehold crackdown December 21, 2017 Housebuilders were hit hard this morning after the government revealed new rules cracking down on leasehold practices described by communities secretary Sajid Javid as “feudal”. Shares in FTSE 250-listed McCarty & Stone, which specialises in retirement homes, fell 10.3 per cent to 152.3p on the news. Meanwhile, on the FTSE 100, Berkeley Group fell 1.5 [...]
UK house prices: First-time buyer market cools in the run-up to Christmas November 27, 2015 Britain first-time buyer market has cooled over the last three months following this summer’s record number of sales, new research shows. New buyers completed 28,100 sales in October, which was down 8.5 per cent compared with July’s eight year high of 30,700, according to figures released today by estate agents Your Move & Reeds Rains. [...]
Loans to home buyers fell in October December 14, 2016 Loans to home buyers fell by eight per cent in October, despite the amount borrowers are paying towards interest rates hitting a historic low. First-time buyers borrowed £4.5bn, a monthly decrease of eight per cent, and a year-on-year drop of two per cent, according to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Read more: [...]
Michelle Mone’s latest bitcoin gambit is EQUI, a venture capital firm to back tech startups with its own cryptocurrency initial coin offering (ICO) February 6, 2018 Fresh from offering luxury apartments in Dubai to buyers with bitcoin, bra tycoon and baroness Michelle Mone is delving deeper into cryptocurrency. Along with boyfriend and businessman Doug Barrowman, the pair are launching a venture capital firm supported by the launch of their own cryptocurrency via what’s known as an initial coin offering (ICO), or [...]
Does earning £70,000 make you rich, as Labour’s John McDonnell suggests? April 19, 2017 The nation’s chattering classes were in uproar today after Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, suggested his party will shift the tax burden to “the rich” – which he defined as those earning “above £70,000 to £80,000 a year”. Does £70,000 really make you rich? Objectively, it isn’t a difficult question to answer: annual earnings of [...]
Bankrupt, jailed, £100m: Confessions of AirX CEO, John Matthews – the least popular man in private jet chartering March 26, 2018 OUR QUIET table at Dover Street’s Arts Club is becoming a de facto confession box. A gin and tonic replacing the grill between priest and penitent, John Matthews peers through his glass – for he hath sinned. The chief executive of AirX, who admits to being the least popular man in private aircraft chartering, has [...]