Financial news

• Seven-year jail terms unveiled for pension fund mismanagement

  10-02-2019 17:23 via theguardian.com
  MPs and experts welcome new criminal offence to punish ‘wilful or reckless’ behaviourMPs and pension experts have welcomed government plans to introduce lengthy jail sentences for executives who recklessly mismanage pension funds, in an effort to avoid a repeat of recent scandals like BHS or Carillion.Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, said the current fines were not enough and that a new criminal offence would be introduced to punish “wilful or reckless behaviour&rdq
  
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• A hundred years of impatience haven't solved economy's structural problems | Larry Elliott

  10-02-2019 12:28
  Brexit is an opportunity, for remainers as well as leavers, to put the country on the right path This year marks a centenary of sorts. Back in 1919, with the first world war finally over, Britain woke up to a new reality: the days of being the world’s pre-eminent economic power were in the past.In truth, the writing had been on the wall before 1914. The US and Germany had caught up with Britain before the assassination at Sarajevo and were forging ahead in the new sectors that had sprung u
  
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• Brexit: sack Grayling over ferry fiasco, demand MPs

  10-02-2019 09:28
  Cross-party calls for transport secretary’s dismissal follow collapse of £13.8m contract to Seaborne FreightTheresa May faced cross-party calls to sack her transport secretary, Chris Grayling, last night, after the calamitous collapse of a no-deal Brexit ferry contract handed to a company with no ships.Senior Tories said the prime minister had turned “a blind eye” to Grayling’s decision to award the £13.8m contract to Seaborne Freight to run ferries between Ra
  
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• Exposed: hidden travel agent fees send air fares sky high

  10-02-2019 09:00
  Online comparison site’s ‘best price’ doubles when its own fees, buried in small print, are addedOnline travel agent Opodo seemed to offer the best deal when Des McGhee searched Kayak, the price comparison website, for a flight from London to Glasgow. Until he reached Opodo’s checkout page, that is. The price had more than doubled, from the £116.80 quoted for four tickets with easyJet to £242.80, with £126 of this the cost of checking in four bags at &po
  
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• Government’s secret post-Brexit plan must rule out the Singapore model

  10-02-2019 08:00
  Whitehall should publish the findings of ‘Project After’ to clarify the direction of UK industrial strategy in the case of no-dealThere are plans under discussion in Whitehall to cope with the long-term consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Dubbed Project After, these plans involve Whitehall officials poring over the government’s entire portfolio of tax and spending commitments and how they might be adjusted once the UK tumbles out of the European Union’s single market and ta
  
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• A Labour budget will not need Brexit. It will need growth | William Keegan

  10-02-2019 08:00
  Corbyn’s determination to free the UK from what he sees as the EU’s shackles would actually be damaging to the party’s causeThe spectre of Brexit haunted last weekend’s annual Venice seminar hosted by the Italian government, but we had to wait for the return home for comparisons with Dante’s Inferno.The president of the European Council has received a lot of flak for his outburst – which, in case you missed it, was: “I have been wondering what that speci
  
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• Has the AA turned a corner, or is it on a road to nowhere?

  10-02-2019 07:59
  This week’s trading update will show whether efforts to jump-start the debt-laden company have had any successThe AA has always considered itself the most staunch of organisations.Take one of its earliest episodes, three months after its foundation in 1905, when a member called Herbert Johnson was accused of exceeding the 20mph speed limit. One of the association’s scouts, William Jones, swore an oath that the motorist must be innocent as he’d followed him on a bicycle at a spe
  
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• Families facing perfect storm of rises in utility bills

  10-02-2019 07:00
  Energy, water and council tax are all set to go up this yearPrice hikes in essential utilities that are set to be introduced in April could result in families plunging into the red and having to turn to moneylenders, consumer campaigners have warned.The average household will have to pay hundreds of pounds more as a result of rises in the price of energy, water and council tax. Campaigners have said that this will especially affect the thousands of people who are already having difficulty afford
  
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