Financial news

• Secret Escapes: Luxury holidays group aims to EXPAND as they seek new acquisitions

  15-04-2018 20:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  SECRET ESCAPES, the luxury holidays group, is on the hunt for up to four acquisitions to accelerate its growth, chief executive and co-founder Alex Saint says.
  
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• Investment world is one to be careful about with bubbles bursting left, right and centre

  15-04-2018 19:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  THE INVESTMENT world is forever blowing bubbles and while they can look lovely for a time they also wreak havoc when they burst. This is a worry, because right now there are bubbles everywhere you look, in technology stocks, property, the bond market and of course bitcoin.
  
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• The Guardian view on QE: the economy needs more than a magic money tree | Editorial

  15-04-2018 19:37
  Quantitative easing succeeded in staving off disaster but it was not enough to regenerate a fair economy. This could have been achieved by a redistributive, expansionary fiscal policy which ministers were ideologically resistant toWhen running for the Labour leadership, Jeremy Corbyn wanted a “people’s quantitative easing” to boost the economy. It was frostily dismissed in 2015 as being forbidden by provisions in the Lisbon treaty. If we leave the European Union, those strictur
  
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• HIGH STREET footfall: West Midlands suffers the BIGGEST DROP on a national level

  15-04-2018 19:37 via feedproxy.google.com
  THE WEST MIDLANDS has been the hardest hit by shoppers deserting the high street, with stores there suffering the biggest drop in footfall nationally, according to data from Springboard.
  
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• WPP: Sir Martin Sorrell awaits his fate as the INVESTIGATION results will be released soon

  15-04-2018 18:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell’s fate could be decided within days, as the results of an investigation into allegations of misconduct against him are due imminently.
  
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• Hedge funds pressure Whitbread to spin off Costa Coffee

  15-04-2018 17:02
  Elliott Advisors, the FTSE 100 firm’s largest investor, believes breaking it up could create £3bn of valueWhitbread is under mounting pressure from hedge funds to break up its business by spinning off the Costa Coffee chain, after activist investor Elliott Advisors built up a stake of more than 6%.
  The US hedge fund said in a statement on Saturday that it has become the largest investor in Whitbread, which started out as a brewing business but now owns Costa, Britain’s biggest
  
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• UK government criticised for 'shocking' inaction on insulating draughty homes

  15-04-2018 16:15
  Citizens Advice says silence on energy efficiency plans will mean households lose outThe government’s failure to take action on insulating draughty homes has been criticised by the statutory body for energy consumers. Related: Smart systems key to future of cheaper and cleaner energy supplyContinue reading...
  
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• Channel 4 kicks off bids for new headquarters

  15-04-2018 15:58
  Broadcaster’s plans include moving 300 of its 800 staff out of the capital Channel 4 is launching the search for a location for its new national headquarters by outlining its plans to more than 100 representatives of UK cities and regions on Monday.The broadcaster is to kick off the bidding process with a presentation at its Horseferry Road headquarters in London, led by its chief executive, Alex Mahon, and Jonathan Allan, its chief commercial officer who is running the process. The public
  
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• Martin Sorrell stands to pick up £20m as WPP faces possible breakup

  15-04-2018 15:48
  Analysts see chief exec’s departure and recent share slump as strong reasons to split world’s biggest ad groupSir Martin Sorrell is in line for almost £20m in payouts from WPP over the next five years, as part of the deal struck to leave the advertising group he founded more than three decades ago.The departure of Sorrell, who resigned on Saturdaybefore learning the findings of an internal investigation into alleged personal misconduct, is also being viewed as a potential catal
  
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• Raise UK household incomes by ending austerity, say Fabians

  15-04-2018 14:57
  Labour MPs co-author report urging public investment and a bigger role for unions Stronger trade unions, improved regional policy and an end to austerity should form part of a plan to return growth in living standards to its pre-crisis levels, according to a leading leftwing thinktank.Calling for a fairer tax system and a less flexible labour market, the Fabian Society said a comprehensive strategy was required to boost household incomes. Continue reading...
  
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• Martin Sorrell steps down as head of WPP advertising group

  15-04-2018 14:51
  Longest-serving FTSE 100 chief quits before findings of personal misconduct inquiry are disclosedSir Martin Sorrell has resigned from WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, ahead of the findings of an investigation into alleged personal misconduct.The 73-year-old, who acquired a small Kent-based maker of wire baskets in 1985 and built it into the world’s largest marketing services group, told staff that for him WPP and its future is “more important than a matter of life or
  
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• Philip Green defends his record on BHS

  15-04-2018 14:04
  Retail tycoon ‘sad’ that he doesn’t get more credit for paying into bankrupt chain’s pension fundRetail tycoon Sir Philip Green has defended his behaviour over the collapse of the BHS chain, describing his decision to sell the retailer to a serial bankrupt as “the worst mistake of my life”.The billionaire owner of Topshop and Miss Selfridge said he was “sad” he had not received recognition for paying £363m into the BHS pension scheme last yea
  
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• The right and left have both signed up to the myth of free market | Larry Elliott

  15-04-2018 12:48
  The problem for progressives is that neo-classical beliefs have taken politics to the rightYou can’t buck the market. The turn to the right taken by politics from the mid-1970s onwards was summed up in one phrase coined by Margaret Thatcher in 1988.This idea tended to be associated with liberal economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, both of whom influenced Thatcher deeply. Both thought that left to their own devices buyers and sellers would work out the price for everythin
  
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• ​A shed the size of a town:​ what Britain’s giant distribution centres​ tell​ us about modern life

  15-04-2018 09:30
  Designed to disappear into the landscape​, Britain’s vast super-warehouses​ also​ reflect a world in which we expect online purchases to arrive as if by magicWhen you click on a product, something, somewhere, moves. The item is shifted off its shelf by human or robot and on to a chain of delivery mechanisms that takes it to your door. That item, and millions others like it, plus the machinery that handles them, needs space. The more we shop online, the more such space is
  
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• Which? pulls the plug on its email service

  15-04-2018 08:00
  Net result … 5,000 will have to switch to another providerI have been a member of Which? for more than 50 years and a supporter of its campaigns for fairness on behalf of consumers in the UK. Since the mid-90s, when the firm provided a “dial-up” internet service to people looking to get online, it has been offering a free email service to subscribers. But the Consumers’ Association – the body behind it – has decided to close it with only a few weeks’ no
  
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• The government may want oligarchs out but it can’t bank on City sanctions

  15-04-2018 08:00
  The financial industry may use Brexit uncertainty as a lever to resist rejecting Russian roublesRussian oligarchs, the rouble and the Moscow stock market all felt the pain of US sanctions last week. The share price slumps at Oleg Deripaska’s En+ and Rusal companies, the steepest daily fall in the national currency for three years, and a double-digit hit to the dollar-denominated RTS index all showed that it is possible to punish Vladimir Putin and his associates.But the international commu
  
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• Bitcoin price SURGE: Cryptocurrency value sees MASSIVE 16 per cent rise in just one week

  15-04-2018 03:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  BITCOIN has seen a major price surge over the past seven days as the cryptocurrency’s price rocketed by 16 per cent in a week to bring its value above $8,000
  
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• Government urged to postpone ‘second mortgage’ scheme

  15-04-2018 01:35
  Anger over effect changes to SMI benefit is having on worried claimantsThe government has been urged to stall controversial benefit changes which came into effect in the new tax year, amid claims they unfairly penalise the most vulnerable in society.On 6 April, a “second mortgage” system replaced the Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI), which helped financially constrained homeowners with their mortgage payments. From this month, it will no longer be paid as a free benefit but, inste
  
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• Spring selling season stalls, as the housing market starts to feel the chill

  15-04-2018 01:30
  What hope is there for buyers and sellers in the flattest period in the last five years?It was an announcement homebuyers and sellers barely needed to be told – Britain’s property market is going through its flattest period in the last five years. A report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) found that demand from buyers, and new instructions from sellers, were down again, the lowest figures since 2013.The survey paints a picture of the UK market as one affected
  
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