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Citywire Money, Tax and Property

  • House prices rise slightly in June
    Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:07:44 +0100
    Land Registry reports 0.1% rise in June following May?s slight fall. Figures come in contrast to other indices which are showing falling prices.

FT.com - Financial Markets News

  • Dollar pressured by US economic outlook
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:50:58 GMT
    The Federal Reserve?s cautious outlook for the world?s biggest economy sends the dollar to a three-month low on a trade-weighted basis, as further fragile data adds to concern
  • Stocks struggle to hold gains after Fed caution
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:40:40 GMT
    Global Markets Overview: Risky assets are fighting to hold their level after a cautious but overall positive assessment of the US economy by the Federal Reserve

Citywire Investment News

  • Towergate launches RDR transition service
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:07:26 +0100
    Towergate Financial is to allow advisers access to its investment proposition and platform as part of a service to help firms prepare for the retail distribution review and improve client communication.

Citywire News


FT.com - Equities

  • Patchy US recovery weighs on Asia
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:28:41 +0100
    Mixed data on June durable goods orders and a downbeat Fed take on the economy are the latest in a string of lacklustre indicators to suggest that the momentum of the US economic recovery is slowing

BBC News

  • Fixed retirement age to be axed
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:59:50 +0000
    People reaching the age of 65 will no longer be forced to retire from October next year, under plans announced by the government.
  • Agency clear of 'cultural' claims
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:51:56 +0000
    An inquiry into claims of 'racial prejudice' at a Cardiff UK Border Agency office finds all but one claim was "unsubstantiated".

Sky Business News


BBC Business News

  • Fixed retirement age to be axed
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:59:50 +0000
    People reaching the age of 65 will no longer be forced to retire from October next year, under plans announced by the government.
  • California in 'fiscal emergency'
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:49:33 +0000
    California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declares a fiscal state of emergency, putting pressure on lawmakers to pass a budget.

Times Online Top Stories

  • Government scales back child worker vetting scheme
    Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:05:54 GMT
    Plans to vet millions of people working with children and vulnerable adults are to be scaled back to ?common sense? levels, the Government announced todayimg width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.timesonline.co.uk/c/32313/f/440134/s/b2c452c/mf.gif' border='0'/br/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/73199304108/u/0/f/440134/c/32313/s/187450668/kg/45/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/73199304108/u/0/f/440134/c/32313/s/187450668/kg/45/a2.img" border="0"//a
  • Live: Bloody Sunday families shown Saville report
    Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:03:21 GMT
    9.40 BST On a January morning 38 years ago, 13 protesters died at the hands of British paratroopers and 14 were injured, one so seriously he died four months later. For many of their relatives, the years since have been dominated by the search for truth about what happened during 25 chaotic minutes in central Londonderry.img width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.timesonline.co.uk/c/32313/f/440134/s/b2c072c/mf.gif' border='0'/br/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/73199169760/u/0/f/440134/c/32313/s/187434796/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/73199169760/u/0/f/440134/c/32313/s/187434796/a2.img" border="0"//a

BBC: Robert Peston

  • BigCo: Not rescuing Britain, yet
    Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:23:31 +0000

    There were results from seven FTSE 100 companies this morning: Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Royal Dutch Shell, AstraZeneca, Reed Elsevier, British Sky Broadcasting and BT Group.

    FTSE 100 displayThey provide some kind of picture of the health and prospects of Britain's biggest companies.

    What they show is that BigCo has come through the worst recession since the 1930s in better shape than some might have expected: typically their indebtedness has been falling gently and is at bearable levels; sales and earnings are flat or rising gently.

    There's a strong emphasis in their respective announcements on containing or reducing costs: Shell boasts of enormous $3.5bn annualised cost savings that it has made; BAE cut headcount by 3,300 in the first half of the year; all BT's profit growth came from reduced operating costs; AstraZeneca is closing two major research sites; at Shell, net capital investment is broadly flat; at Reed, the emphasis is all about generating cash in a climate where demand from business and professional users is flat.

    And although they all talk the talk of investing for the future, in practice they are maintaining investment rather than increasing it: investment in research and development at Rolls-Royce was flat at £436m in the first half; capital expenditure at BT fell in the first quarter; at AstraZeneca there's very tight control of investment.

    Now the one outlier or anomaly is British Sky Broadcasting, which happens to be the most domestic and the most consumer facing of all the businesses. What is striking about BSkyB is that its emphasis is on containing cost growth rather than cutting costs. It significantly increased investment in new programmes and content and it is putting money into new services (such as 3D TV).

    So what does all this mean for the British economy?

    Well it would be dangerous to draw firm conclusions, even from the results and expectations of seven such big companies, partly, of course, because all of them (except BSkyB and to a lesser extent BT) are very international, both in terms of where they employ people and where they sell their stuff. Arguably they're only British in the sense of where they have their respective head offices.

    But their plans do pose something of a challenge to the government's hopes of a "balanced" economic recovery in the UK.

    In a climate where public spending is being slashed and where British consumers cannot and should not be relied on to increase spending, because of the imperative of paying down their record debts, it really matters that BigCo invests more in the UK, employs more people in the UK and exports more.

    At some point, all of that will of course happen. But it is not obvious from the results and expectations of these seven companies that the revival of business leaders' animal spirits will happen sufficiently quickly to prevent economic growth in the UK being anaemic to the point of non-existence for some considerable time to come.


  • Dare we wait for bank reforms?
    Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:51:46 +0000

    Earlier this week, the so-called Basel Committee on Banking Supervision - the supreme decision making body for global banking regulation - decided to delay till 2018 the implementation of new rules that would strengthen banks.

    Which is so far off that some would query whether those rules will ever really be implemented.

    Mervyn KingBut Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, told MPs today that more rapid implementation would have risked snuffing out our fragile economic recovery, because the effect of the new rules would have been to deter banks from lending.

    As for investors, they love the delay: shares in banks have surged relative to other shares in the past few days.

    Why is that? Well the new rules would force some banks to raise billions of pounds in new capital as a buffer against potential future losses. And whenever banks issue shares to raise capital, that reduces the value of existing shares.

    Here's the paradox: investors positive reaction and the rise in banks' share prices will tend to reinforce economic growth and should thus strengthen banks; but if there turns out to be another banking crisis before 2018, banks may not be in optimal shape to cope with it.

    PS I intend to write a longer analysis of Monday's revisions to the proposed Basel lll rules on banks' capital adequacy. There are reasons to be concerned about the foundations and philosophy of this attempt to learn the lessons of 2008's banking meltdown.



FT.com - Your Investments

  • JPMorgan raises £104m for new fund
    Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:59:52 +0100
    JP Morgan Asset Management has raised £104m for a new investment trust that will be the first to invest solely in global emerging markets for income

FT.com - Your Pension


FT.com - Your Tax

  • Wealth questions - Can I reclaim tax from redundancy?
    Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:34:20 +0100
    The first £30,000 of my redundancy cash was tax-free but I paid 40 per cent tax on the remainder. I have now learnt that I could have put the balance into my pension to reduce any tax liability

FT.com - Your Property

  • Surge in tied financial products
    Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:46:58 +0100
    The number of tied financial products has jumped since the beginning of the year, according to new research by Which?

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