Market Buzz
Monday newspaper round-up: Debanking, mortgage rates, London office space
Banks are closing more than 1,000 accounts every working day, according to new data that has fuelled the growing row over so-called “debanking” and prompted Nigel Farage to call for a royal commission to investigate what he said was a scandal. Hours after the former Ukip leader revealed he was spearheading a website to campaign on behalf of people whose accounts had been shut, data revealed a big jump in the numbers of customers dumped by their bank. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: 'Debt timebomb', Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems
Millions of British families are are having to borrow to pay their basic bills and expenses marking a dangerous new phase of the cost of living crisis. And with interest rates set to be hiked again over the coming week, some are warning of a "debt timebomb" among less well off households. Rising rates are in many cases also cutting of access to borrowing. Reports also suggested that struggling single parents were being targeted through social media ads with inappropriate debt repayment schemes.
Friday newspaper round-up: UK property, shops, Ford
That buying a property – any property – in the UK is increasingly the preserve of the rich will come as no surprise to low-income households. But official data shows that the middle classes are increasingly squeezed, with only the cheapest 10% of houses now affordable (no more than five times a household’s income according to the Office for National Statistics) to middle-income England. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: City AM, motor industry, Freshfields
Lawyers for the British billionaire Joe Lewis have accused prosecutors of making an “egregious” mistake, as the 86-year-old pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. Lewis, who heads the family that owns Tottenham Hotspur FC, was arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court with 16 counts of securities fraud and three of conspiracy to commit fraud, which prosecutors called a “brazen” insider trading scheme to enrich his friends, lovers and employees, including two private jet pilots.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Tax reliefs, hiring prospects, JPMorgan
Almost £200bn of tax reliefs handed to businesses and individuals each year should come under greater government scrutiny to prevent fraud and abuse, according to an all-party group of MPs. The Treasury committee said in a report published on Wednesday that “a systematic review” into more than 1,000 tax reliefs was needed after MPs found HM Revenue and Customs did not have the resources to monitor how tax breaks and deductions were used. – Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Heathrow, Virgin Media, Credit Suisse
Big pay increases for highly paid workers in London and the south-east have masked real wage cuts across large swathes of the economy and led to a widening in the UK’s geographical earnings gap, a leading thinktank has said. A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that while workers in some sectors – such as manufacturing, education and hospitality – had fallen in inflation-adjusted terms, there had been significant rises for those employed in the business services sector, the City and IT.
Monday newspaper round-up: Business energy, Vectura, Rhodes fire, Barbenheimer, interest rates
A coalition representing 1m small businesses is urging the energy regulator to crack down on the rogue energy brokers who rip off firms, charities, care homes and faith groups by piling billions of pounds in hidden commission fees on to bills. The business groups have written to Ofgem demanding it force gas and electricity suppliers to disclose how much they are paying the intermediaries who market deals on their behalf. – Guardian.
Friday newspaper round-up: Energy ambitions, Royal Mail, Unilever
Sweden’s state energy company has abandoned work on a multibillion-pound wind farm off the coast of Norfolk because of soaring costs in a blow to Britain’s clean energy ambitions. Vattenfall said it was stopping development of the 1. 4 gigawatt Norfolk Boreas wind farm, which could have powered about 1. 5 million homes, after supply chain problems and inflation increased its costs by up to 40 per cent. - The Times.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Coutts, Netflix, Tesla
The City regulator has said it has contacted the owner of Coutts bank amid a growing row over its decision to close Nigel Farage’s accounts, but told MPs that while lenders cannot discriminate against customers, it is ultimately up to firms to decide who to do business with. It came as the prime minister, the home secretary and the City minister waded in to the growing debate over the rights of lenders to shut or refuse accounts based on concerns over customers’ political views.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: JLR, Meta, BoE staff
The owner of carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is expected to announce that it will build an electric car battery gigafactory in the UK, backed with £500m in government funding, in what would be a major boost for the British car industry. Indian conglomerate Tata Group, which owns Jaguar Land Rover, has been locked in negotiations for months to secure state aid for the project, which would aim to produce 40 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries a year, enough to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Tesla, Robinhood, finfluencers
Tesla Inc’s directors will return $735m to the company to settle claims they grossly overpaid themselves in one of the largest shareholder settlements of its kind, according to a Monday filing in a Delaware court. The settlement resolves a 2020 lawsuit by a retirement fund which holds Tesla stock and challenged stock options that were granted to Tesla directors starting in June 2017. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Betting companies, British Airways, Netflix
Betting company logos appear as often as 3,500 times during the course of a televised football match, the majority on pitchside hoardings, prompting renewed scepticism about top-flight clubs’ plan to give up front-of-shirt betting ads only. A study led by psychology experts from four universities measured the volume of gambling adverts during 10 matches that took place last season, featuring every Premier League club. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Tesco, Green Agenda, EasyJet
Tesco is leaning on its suppliers so that they pass on savings from falling costs so that it can reduce prices more quickly than rivals and thus lead on price cuts. Among other factors, on Thursday Tesco pointed to a halviing in wholesale electricity prices, a 22% reduction in PET packaging and an 84% fall in the cost of freight. Suppliers however said that other costs had continued to rise - not least wages. And in response to prodding by MPs, Asda co-owner, Mohsin Issa, has cautioned that fixed-term contracts meants that three to nine more month would be needed before customers benefitted from falling prices.
Friday newspaper round-up: Deloitte, public finances, Apple sales
Controversial UK government aspirations to replace gas boilers in some homes with a hydrogen-based alternative are likely to be scrapped, Grant Shapps, the energy minister, has indicated. Shapps said he believed hydrogen would form part of Britain’s overall energy mix but predicted it was “less likely” that the gas would be routinely piped into people’s homes, amid growing concerns about cost, safety and perpetuating a reliance on fossil fuels. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Twitter, Thames Water, savings rates
Billions of pounds of taxpayer cash spent on one-off cost of living support has proved an expensive and ineffective “sticking plaster” that would have been better used to raise the value of benefits, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. Britain’s foremost economics thinktank said the government’s cost of living payments scheme, introduced by Rishi Sunak while he was chancellor, had cost the exchequer almost £19bn over two years. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: AI, Tesla, hydrogen, Odey
The head of the UK’s financial regulator is to warn that banks, investors and insurers will have to ramp up their spending to combat scammers using artificial intelligence to commit fraud. Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), will say that there are risks of “cyber fraud, cyber-attacks and identity fraud increasing in scale and sophistication and effectiveness” as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widespread, in a speech in London on Wednesday.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Gambling, DWF, credit card spending
The main lobby group for the UK gambling industry has been accused of making inaccurate statements relating to the regulation of the £10bn-a-year sector the day before its boss appears before a parliamentary committee. Michael Dugher, the chief executive of the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC), is to be question by MPs on the select committee for culture, media and sport on Tuesday as part of a review of government proposals to improve gambling regulation. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: BT, Vodafone, Issa brothers
British businesses are slowing down hiring just as the number of people looking for work rises, according to data that suggested “lingering uncertainty” over the economic outlook. The availability of candidates for new jobs rose in June at the sharpest rate since the height of the UK’s coronavirus restrictions in December 2020, according to the latest report on jobs by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: BT Group, Aston Martin, MPs
BT has intensified its preparations to see off a possible takeover bid by its major shareholder Deutsche Telekom. For months now, the telecoms services provider had been working with Robey Warshaw and Goldman Sachs to prepare against such a scenario. Speculation in that regard was reaching a crescendo both in the City and within the sector, due to BT's need to invest £15bn in its new fibre-optic broadband network and multiple potentially destabilising factors. - The Sunday Telegraph .
Friday newspaper round-up: Twitter, Gatwick, banks
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new Threads app, which Mark Zuckerberg has openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter’s “intellectual property rights”. In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.