Financial news

• Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley agrees to appear in front of MPs

  05-06-2016 20:05
  
  The businessman to appear before MPs on Tuesday to ‘defend the good name’ of the retailerMike Ashley will go before MPs to “defend the good name” of Sports Direct on Tuesday in a change of plan just days after he said he would defy a parliamentary summons.The billionaire founder of the retail chain has written to the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) committee to say that he had a change of heart after careful consideration over the weekend. Continue reading...
  
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• Anti-muzak campaigner enjoys the sound of silence inside M&S

  05-06-2016 18:36
  
  Nigel Rodgers and his group Pipedown quietly celebrate a rare victory in their war against piped music in public spacesStepping off a bustling Oxford Street into the Marks & Spencer flagship Marble Arch store, Nigel Rodgers stops, listens, then lets out a contented sigh.
  “Nothing,” he declares, with some satisfaction. “When noise is succeeded by silence, there is a sense of release.”Continue reading...
  
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• Chronicle of a debt foretold at BHS

  05-06-2016 17:07
  
  Way back in 2002, a Sunday Telegraph journalist interviewing Sir Philip Green had an uncanny moment of clarityAs life at BHS comes to an end for 11,000 frequently overlooked staff, who are now facing a future without a job or a fully funded pension scheme, attention remains on the men who owned the department store chain – plus those who profited as it collapsed.Guy and Alexander Dellal, the father and son behind the property company that helped to bankroll Dominic Chappell’s takeove
  
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• Bank of England in preparations for potential Brexit

  05-06-2016 16:44
  
  Funding operations will ensure UK commercial banks have cash to cope with any turmoil caused by market uncertaintyThe Bank of England will draw on lessons learned from the Scottish referendum and the global financial crisis as it steps up its preparations for a possible decision by Britain to leave the EU on 23 June.The first of three special funding operations by Threadneedle Street will be launched on 14 June to ensure the UK’s commercial banks have the necessary cash to cope with any tu
  
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• Former Asda boss backs new Guess How Much! discount store

  05-06-2016 16:06
  
  GHM! will enter a highly competitive market in which B&M, Home Bargains and Poundstretcher are all expandingFormer Asda boss Andy Bond is upping his assault on the UK’s discounter market with the opening of the first store in a new chain called GHM! on Tuesday.The clothing, homewares and groceries chain, whose three letters stand for Guess How Much!, will kick off in Hinckley, Leicestershire, with plans for at least five outlets by the end of the year. The second will open on the Isle
  
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• Excess capacity in Chinese economy distorting world markets, says Jack Lew

  05-06-2016 15:16
  
  US Treasury secretary hopes that talks between US and Chinese officials on industry capacity would be as fruitful as those on currency policyChina’s excess industrial capacity will have a “corrosive” impact on its future growth and efficiency unless it is reduced, US Treasury secretary Jack Lew said on Sunday, adding that it was also causing distortions in global markets. Lew, speaking to students in Beijing, made the remarks ahead of talks with senior Chinese officials startin
  
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• John McDonnell: Labour taking a close look at universal basic income

  05-06-2016 14:30
  
  Shadow chancellor says the concept of an unconditional payment to all could prepare country for robotisation of the workforce Labour is considering backing the idea of a universal basic income – a radical transformation of the welfare state that would ditch means-tested benefits in favour of a flat-rate payment. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, who is keen to find policies to match his slogan of a “new economics,” will appear at the launch of a report on the proposal from
  
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• Brexit forecasters miss everything that matters to real voters

  05-06-2016 12:39
  
  What if the warnings from the IMF, the OECD and the Bank of England are just going straight over the heads of ordinary people?The International Monetary Fund says Brexit would either be pretty bad or very bad. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warns that there would be dire consequences not just for Britain, but for the rest of the world. The Bank of England says output would go down and inflation would go up. As far as George Osborne and David Cameron are concerned, the
  
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• Elizabeth Holmes's fall from hero to zero highlights problems of rich lists

  05-06-2016 12:00
  
  Holmes went from Forbes’s richest self-made woman to a net worth of zero but while some super-rich feel undervalued by rich lists others are glad to be omittedFrom hero to zero – literally. That’s the journey 32-year-old Elizabeth Holmes has taken in only a year, courtesy of Forbes and its annual lists of the US’s richest citizens.Every summer the magazine offers up rankings of the rich for our perusal, sliced and diced for our voyeuristic delectation. There’s the B
  
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• Financial watchdogs need more bite to bring shadow banking to heel

  05-06-2016 10:00
  
  Bank of England boss Mark Carney should listen to those who fear regulators need to do more to stop continued bad practice in the financial sectorBehind the easy-going manner, Bank of England governor Mark Carney is angry. The object of his anger is Sir John Vickers, the mild-mannered former deputy governor who keeps telling the world that Carney has gone soft on the bankers.In recent months, when he hasn’t been discussing the impact of the EU referendum, Carney has behaved as if he were a
  
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• Brexit may seem like the west’s biggest problem. But look at the US economy

  05-06-2016 10:00
  
  The latest American job market figures are truly alarming: and will require a complete change of approach from the Federal ReserveBritain is trapped in its own little Brexit bubble. For the next two and a half weeks, the country will be obsessed with the result of the referendum on 23 June. Nothing that is going on in the rest of the world will get much of a look-in.But beyond these shores, things are happening. The authorities in China are desperately trying to shore up growth. Eurozone finance
  
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• The hard-hat chancellor: what kind of Britain is George Osborne building?

  05-06-2016 09:00
  
  He loves to pose in a high-vis jacket… but will the chancellor’s grand projects deliver? We take a closer look at the initiatives he claims will transform the UKIf George Osborne has an identifying attribute – what a cigar was to Churchill or a pint of beer to Zac Goldsmith – it is the pairing of hard hat and hi-vis jacket. One suspects he would struggle to wield a screwdriver to much effect but he loves to have himself photographed, again and again, on construction site
  
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• Graduates who keep on paying after they’ve cleared their student debts

  05-06-2016 08:00
  
  Controversial loan system is under fire again as it emerges that thousands overpay afterleaving universityTwo years after she paid off her student loan, Melanie Rodrigues thought she had finally seen the back of her university debts. Instead, the BBC producer has found herself locked in an “infuriating” battle with the Student Loans Company (SLC) after repayments continue to be docked from her salary.“I’m owed at least £4,000,” she says. “But I wasn&rsqu
  
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• An old Cashplus prepaid card has ruined my credit rating

  05-06-2016 08:00
  
  Advanced Payment Solutions applied a ‘credit booster’ product to my card – now my rating has gone from excellent to very poorI’m writing to you as a last resort. In 2014 I ordered a Cashplus prepaid card from a firm called Advanced Payment Solutions. I wanted to use it for holiday spending abroad.Investigating a mortgage for a new home last year, I found that my credit rating had gone from excellent to very poor. After reviewing my Experian file I could see five late paym
  
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