Financial news

• Fragmented world’s rival blocs may risk new cold war, says IMF head

  13-04-2023 20:03
  
  Warning from Kristalina Georgieva after G7 explores economic resilience, secure global supply chains and less reliance on ChinaFragmentation of the global economy into rival trading blocs runs the risk of prompting a new cold war, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said.Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said a combination of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and shortcomings with globalisation had led to a potentially dangerous splintering. Continue readi
  
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• 'Twice as determined': hundreds of thousands protest in Paris against pension changes – video report

  13-04-2023 19:50
  
  Strike action has again heated up in Paris as demonstrators protested against Emmanuel Macron's unpopular plan to raise France’s minimum pension age from 62 to 64.Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across France ahead of a ruling on the bill by the constitutional council on Friday.Some Paris bin-collectors resumed the capital’s refuse strike, which stopped at the end of March after about 10,000 tonnes of rubbish piled up. Police estimated that between 400,000 and 600,000 pe
  
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• Economic hit from public sector strikes worth it to tame UK inflation, says Hunt

  13-04-2023 19:40
  
  Chancellor’s remarks come despite industrial action being major factor in zero GDP growth in FebruaryThe government is willing to accept short-term damage to the economy from public sector strikes rather than give in to pay demands and risk a longer-term hit from persistently higher inflation, Jeremy Hunt has insisted.Speaking in Washington, the chancellor said he “completely understood” public anger at the high cost of living but added that the impact of rising prices would be
  
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• Akshata Murty to get almost £6.7m in Infosys dividends

  13-04-2023 19:08
  
  Income of Rishi Sunak’s wife from Indian tech firm to reach £13m for financial yearThe prime minister’s wife, Akshata Murty, will receive nearly £6.7m in dividend payments from her shares in the technology company Infosys this summer.India’s second biggest IT company, co-founded by Rishi Sunak’s father in law, revealed the latest dividend for shareholders in annual results on Thursday. Continue reading...
  
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• Exxon CEO’s pay rose 52% to nearly £30m amid Ukraine war, figures show

  13-04-2023 18:58
  
  Darren Woods’ pay is ‘reflective of record company earnings and stock price performance’, says oil firmExxonMobil handed its chief executive a 52% pay increase to $35.9m (£28.7m) for 2022 after the oil company reported its highest ever profits amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Darren Woods’ salary rose by 10% to $1.9m last year while his bonus and share awards surged by 80% compared with the year before. The company said the bumper payday was “reflective
  
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• EU motorist fined almost £11,000 after falling foul of London Ulez rule

  13-04-2023 17:00
  
  French hire car met emissions standard but had not been registered with TfL, resulting in penalty noticesA motorist was fined nearly £11,000 for driving his French rental car in London’s ultra-low emission zone on a three-day trip to the UK, despite the fact the vehicle met the environmental standards to enter the Ulez for nothing.Christian Ducarre received four penalty charge notices (PCNs) after falling foul of a little-known requirement under which foreign vehicles must be registe
  
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• Why Bank of England is looking to bolster UK protections for savers

  13-04-2023 16:59
  
  Governor has played down repeat of financial crisis but review of payout policy points to unhappy memoriesWhen Andrew Bailey revealed in a speech that the Bank of England was working on updating Britain’s deposit insurance guarantee scheme, which gives government protection on savings up to £85,000 in the event of a bank run, it was with one eye on the recent shocks, and the other on events from 15 years ago.Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, and Icesave may sound like names from
  
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• Equal parts practical and daring: how Mary Quant created look for a new way of living

  13-04-2023 16:43
  
  Swinging 60s icon brought a sense of female liberty to her designsFashion designer Dame Mary Quant dies aged 93Only the Beatles are more closely tied to the legend that is London’s swinging 60s than Mary Quant. If the Fab Four wrote the soundtrack, Quant designed the look.Quant, who has died peacefully at home in Surrey aged 93, claimed to have invented the miniskirt. André Courrèges might have quibbled with this, but there is no doubt that it was Quant’s vision of what
  
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• Sainsbury’s follows Tesco in cutting price of milk by 5p a pint

  13-04-2023 15:54
  
  Spring oversupply leads to first cut since 2020, although price still third higher than just over year agoSainsbury’s has followed Tesco in cutting the price of milk by 5p a pint as supermarkets take advantage of a spring boost to production amid lacklustre demand.Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket, cut the price of milk to 90p for a pint or £1.55 for four pints – a reduction of 10p – for the first time since 2020 this week. Continue reading...
  
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• Former TSB chief information officer fined £81,000 over IT meltdown in 2018

  13-04-2023 15:50
  
  Regulator says Carlos Abarca ‘failed to take reasonable steps’ to ensure outsourcing firm was ready to migrate accounts en masseUK regulators have imposed an £81,000 fine on a former TSB information officer over the bank’s IT meltdown in 2018 that left millions of customers locked out of their accounts.The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said Carlos Abarca, who was TSB’s chief information officer at the time of the meltdown, “failed to take reasonable st
  
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• UK is worst performer in G7 for workforce participation since Covid

  13-04-2023 15:27
  
  Number of working-age adults in work or job hunting is still lower than before pandemic, OECD figures showBritain has emerged as the worst-performing country in the G7 for workforce participation since the Covid pandemic, after an exodus of half a million people at a time of record levels of long-term sickness.Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed the UK’s labour force participation – the percentage of working-age adults either in work
  
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• A dachshund discovers the Scottish Borders: our pet-friendly stay in the Tweed Valley

  13-04-2023 15:22
  
  With their love of walking and aptitude for chilling, dogs are great travel companions – but it’s not always easy to bring them along with you. Luckily for Antonia Wilson, a beautiful cottage just an hour from Edinburgh proved the perfect place to go with her dog and a few friendsSet against the backdrop of the Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders, our home for the weekend is whitewashed Tweedford Cottage, in a section of wilderness as bewitching as ever we needed. Although only an h
  
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• UK parents: how has the higher cost of living affected your child maintenance payments?

  13-04-2023 13:56
  
  We’re interested to hear from UK parents whether inflation and the cost of living crisis have changed the amount of child maintenance they pay, receive, or can affordWe’d like to hear from parents in the UK who either receive or pay child maintenance, and how inflation and the cost of living crisis have affected these payments.Has your ability to afford the payments changed because of the higher cost of living, or your ability to budget with child maintenance that you receive? We&rsq
  
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• FTX could be revived as more customers’ funds recovered, say lawyers

  13-04-2023 13:42
  
  Cryptocurrency exchange collapsed last year but assets worth $7.3bn have now been retrievedThe defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX has recovered $7.3bn (£5.8bn) of customer funds and could be restarted as a going concern as soon as next year, the company’s lawyers have said.“The situation has stabilised, and the dumpster fire is out,” its attorney Andy Dietderich said during a hearing at a Delaware bankruptcy court. Continue reading...
  
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• Wealthy west has little excuse after finally waking up to global debt crisis | Larry Elliott

  13-04-2023 13:29
  
  As recent banking failures in US and Europe show, rich countries can act quickly when they want toAfter a decade or more in which they have been obsessed with their own problems, countries in the wealthy west are starting to wake up to the risk of a looming debt crisis in poorer parts of the world.This week’s gathering of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington has been marked by a discussion about what to do about countries that are in debt distress or on the brink of
  
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• EY tells UK staff to expect cuts after breakup failure

  13-04-2023 12:20
  
  ‘Embarrassed’ bosses at accounting firm sound warning as global costs of failed split reach $600mBusiness live – latest updatesEY has reportedly told UK staff to brace for a wave of cuts, after the business spent $600m (£480m) globally preparing for a now-scrapped breakup of its operations.Bosses at the accounting firm told staff during a phone call on Wednesday that it felt like a “low point” for the business, and admitted they were “disappointed and em
  
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• When Britain's care homes reward shareholders over staff, we need a new system | Amy Horton

  13-04-2023 11:19
  
  Care workers kept the industry going in the Covid years on low wages at great personal cost – yet many are still strugglingOur care system should be enabling people to live fulfilling lives, but each week brings new evidence that Britain’s social care system is unable to deliver this.Huge numbers of people are struggling to access support. The majority of people who deal with care services are unsatisfied with them. And the number of vacant posts in adult social care is the highest s
  
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• ‘The stress is overwhelming’: the highs and lows of starting a new life in a static caravan

  13-04-2023 11:00
  
  Evicted or driven out by rent rises, people are turning to caravans as a cheap option. Some love the lifestyle – but for others, it is cold and unsafeJake Lee moved into a caravan two years ago and has never been happier. Before buying his static in Moray, Scotland, Lee was a Londoner. Fifteen years earlier, he’d taken out an interest-only mortgage – or, as he puts it, “one of these mortgages that shouldn’t have been given out”. “I knew that I wasn&rsquo
  
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• Sorry, Jeremy, but if inflation does plunge this year it won’t be thanks to you

  13-04-2023 08:15 via express.co.uk
  
  Consumer price inflation is set to fall sharply this year and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is desperate to claim the credit when it happens.
  
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• UK defies warnings again to avoid recession as GDP figures show growth flatlining

  13-04-2023 08:10 via express.co.uk
  
  The UK economy showed no growth in the month of February.
  
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• If the lid snaps shut on Tupperware, we’ll all be sorry | Zoe Williams

  13-04-2023 08:00
  
  Suburbia, feminism, the Queen’s breakfast: you could tell a history of the 20th century through those plastic lifesaversWhat Covid did to various businesses will never make total sense to me. But it appears to have both saved Tupperware, briefly, and now scotched it, the pandemic bounce for the storage container dropping off so precipitously that the Massachusetts firm says it could go bust if it can’t find emergency funding. Competitors are too good at TikTok, is another explanation
  
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• This is how the state pension triple lock dies - quietly, sneakily, suddenly

  13-04-2023 06:30 via express.co.uk
  
  A lot of very powerful and influential people would like to see the back of the state pension triple lock. Worryingly, that includes pretty much everybody working at HM Treasury.
  
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• More house price drops expected despite signs of market stabilising

  13-04-2023 01:01
  
  Rics monthly poll shows new buyer inquiries in UK are flat as volume of agreed sales falls furtherUK house prices are expected to continue to fall despite surveyors’ expectations that the housing market will stabilise over the next 12 months, a study has shown.The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (Rics) monthly survey, which measures the proportion of surveyors reporting new buyer inquiries against those saying they fell, found the net balance was -29% in March, almost flat
  
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