Financial news

• Low interest rates benefit millennials, not pensioners | Phillip Inman

  13-08-2019 20:02
  Borrowers have the whip hand – in Denmark one bank has even started paying them to take out a loanSavers in Denmark must be squealing with pain at the advent of the world’s first negative rate mortgage, courtesy of Jyske Bank.Danish savers currently get about 0.1% for their pots of money at the bank and soon they might find deposit-takers start charging them to protect their piles of cash. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Solarplicity becomes 13th energy supplier to collapse since 2018

  13-08-2019 19:01
  Thousands of homes left without an energy provider after firm goes bustThousands of homes and hundreds of companies have been left without an energy provider after Solarplicity became the 13th firm to collapse out of the energy market since the start of last year.It ceased trading two weeks after selling most of its customers to a rival amid a rising number of complaints and a deepening row with the energy regulator. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Pound euro exchange rate: GBP/EUR improves as UK wage growth shows new high

  13-08-2019 17:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  The pound euro exchange rate edged higher this morning, with the pairing fluctuating around €1.079 following the publication of the UK’s wage growth figure. Growth in average earnings came in at an 11-year high in June, rising from 3.6 percent to 3.9 percent – a rise of 8.3 percent.
  
  Read more

• Danish bank launches world’s first negative interest rate mortgage

  13-08-2019 17:15
  Jyske Bank will effectively pay borrowers 0.5% a year to take out a loanA Danish bank has launched the world’s first negative interest rate mortgage – handing out loans to homeowners where the charge is minus 0.5% a year.Negative interest rates effectively mean that a bank pays a borrower to take money off their hands, so they pay back less than they have been loaned. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Landmark verdict over letting agency that posed as a club

  13-08-2019 13:58
  £42,273 fine marks a ‘major victory’ for all private tenantsA lettings agency that posed as a membership club to dodge tenancy laws has been fined more than £40,000 in the first prosecution of its kind in the UK.Lifestyle Club Ltd pressured tenants to sign a contract without inspecting the terms or the accommodation, charged them a non-refundable “joining” fee and “membership” fee worth a month’s rent instead of a deposit, and directed those
  
  Read more

• Mental health issues and money: kindness is not good enough

  13-08-2019 13:53
  Being more understanding alone doesn’t give those with severe problems the services they needFor Andrew Dickens, the problems started as soon as he was old enough to get credit. “I was terrible with money,” he says. “And it was the late 90s and credit was dished out like sweets.” After leaving university, he would frequently build up debt on credit cards to fund his lifestyle, before being offered consolidation loans to bring the balance to zero. “And off you
  
  Read more

• Working unpredictable catering shifts in the gig economy made me crave routine | Micha Frazer-Carroll

  13-08-2019 12:36
  As I struggled after A-levels, a sometimes lonely summer job showed me it was stability I needed to overcome my shynessI’ve never been very good with change. On all my birthdays my mum likes to drag up the story about how I cried when I turned five because I wanted to stay four forever and, honestly, I still relate. So when year 13 exams wrapped up and my time at school came to an end, I felt disorientated, as though I’d fallen off the edge into nothingness.I had a university place c
  
  Read more

• UK wages rise at fastest rate for a decade despite Brexit risks

  13-08-2019 12:25
  British workers’ pay rose 3.9% over last three months in sharp contrast to slowing economyBritish workers’ basic pay is growing at the fastest rate for more than a decade despite mounting risks to the economy as Brexit looms.In sharp contrast to the broader economic slowdown that has taken Britain to the brink of recession, the Office for National Statistics said annual average pay – excluding bonuses – rose by 3.9% in the three months to June, the highest rate since June
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Talk of a public housing renaissance in London is fake news

  13-08-2019 08:47
  Developers exploit spurious definitions of affordability to pretend they are solving a housing crisis they helped to createAs academics researching the UK housing crisis, we are all too familiar with the extreme lack of public housing. Between 1981 and 2016, for instance, social housing in England decreased by 25%.So we were surprised to hear about the “renaissance” of public housing in the capital, celebrated in an exhibition by the New London Architecture Foundation, an independent
  
  Read more

• Trump adds a dismal dimension to the US-China trade dispute | Jeffrey Frankel

  13-08-2019 08:00
  President asserts that the recent depreciation of the yuan amounts to currency manipulation. Not trueThe trade war between the US and China is heating up again, with the US president, Donald Trump, abruptly announcing plans to impose a 10% tariff on the $300bn (£248bn) worth of imports from China that he had so far left untouched. The Chinese authorities then allowed their currency, the yuan, to fall below the symbolic threshold of seven to the dollar. The Trump administration promptly res
  
  Read more

• Brexit has turned our government into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth | Polly Toynbee

  13-08-2019 07:00
  While businesses struggle with the red tape of no-deal planning, ministers are busy with commemorative coinsBritain is battle-ready for no-deal Brexit, that’s the message. Downing Street gave every department 72 hours last week to present watertight crash-out plans and woe betide any whose ideas blow up later, Dominic Cummings menaced. “Task and finish units” will stress-test each one: tremble at the military-style management speak.In case anyone dares express a doubt that the
  
  Read more

• Verizon sells Tumblr just two years after acquiring social network

  13-08-2019 01:34
  Web services company Automattic, best known for running Wordpress.com, acquired TumblrSale price was not disclosed, but reports have put it at under $3mVerizon is selling Tumblr, just two years after buying the social network as part of its tumultuous $4.48bn Yahoo acquisition.Founded in 2007 as one of the first “microblogging” services, Tumblr has been acquired by Automattic, the web services company best known for running blogging platform Wordpress.com, for an undisclosed price ta
  
  Read more

• UK retailers demand business rate cuts to save high street stores

  13-08-2019 01:01
  Marks & Spencer and other chains say tax changes needed to save jobs and communitiesMore than 50 major UK retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Harrods and Iceland, have demanded tax cuts from the government to safeguard the future of the high street amid intense pressure from online rivals.In a letter to the chancellor, Sajid Javid, the bosses of some of the nation’s biggest retail chains called for an urgent reform of the business rates system, which taxes companies based on the
  
  Read more

Follow @financialnwsUK on Twitter!