Financial news

• Royal Mail’s app lets customers detect counterfeit stamps

  30-07-2024 20:14 via theguardian.com
  
  Barcode scanner tool follows row over £5 fines levied on recipients of letters carrying alleged fake postageRoyal Mail has launched a scanner tool in its app that lets customers check if a stamp is counterfeit.Following a row over £5 “fines” being levied on people who received a letter carrying an allegedly fake stamp, Royal Mail has also announced a new independent arbitrator to settle disputes about whether a stamp is genuine or not. Continue reading...
  
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• “Tragedy” as Labour axe cap on social care costs in £1 billion blow to elderly

  30-07-2024 17:09 via express.co.uk
  
  Rachel Reeves announced the cancellation of cap on Monday, alongside a swathe of other spending cuts, in a bid to save £1.1 billion.
  
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• UK regulator looks at Google’s partnership with Anthropic

  30-07-2024 16:53
  CMA to consider whether deal with AI startup is a potential merger, which could prompt full investigationThe Competition and Markets Authority has begun a preliminary investigation into a partnership between Google and the AI startup Anthropic, marking the latest in a string of investigations into deals between big tech companies and smallerAI ones.Google invested $2bn (about £1.56bn) into Anthropic in 2023, shortly after signing a cloud computing agreement with the startup, which develops
  
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• Housebuilding target to rise from 300,000 per year to 370,000, says Angela Rayner – video

  30-07-2024 16:13
  The collective total for the new mandatory housebuilding target would rise from 300,000 a year to 370,000 under Labour, with an obligation to build homes in all areas, Angela Rayner told MPs in parliament. Councils in England could be forced to build on low-quality green belt sites to meet mandatory targets as part of a government shake-up of planning rules. Under the new regime all local authorities will have a duty to deliver more homes, and unless they produce a clear plan for how this will h
  
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• UK shopping trips decline by 12% compared to last year, Virgin Media O2 Business reports

  30-07-2024 16:06 via express.co.uk
  
  The marked decrease in shopping trips could be due to only 15 percent of shoppers being willing to venture out to spend in bad weather, according to the latest Movers Index from Virgin Media O2 Business.
  
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• Inside typical first-time buyer home in 2020s compared to 1970s as prices spiral

  30-07-2024 15:59 via express.co.uk
  
  The average first-time buyer home has changed a lot over the decades - buyers are now expected to pay six times the average salary to get on the property ladder
  
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• Warning Winter Fuel Payment cut is a 'death sentence for pensioners'

  30-07-2024 15:24 via express.co.uk
  
  The warning has been sounded by leading charities who say it will cause real hardship and threaten health of vulnerable people who cannot afford to keep warm.
  
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• Greggs adds 5p to cost of sausage rolls despite plan not to raise prices

  30-07-2024 15:15
  Bakery chain says price of meal deals will stay the same but increased costs have put it under pressureGreggs has increased the amount it charges for some of its items, including an extra 5p on sausage rolls and their vegan equivalent, despite the bakery chain having said earlier this year it had no plans to increase prices.Roisin Currie, chief executive of the Newcastle-based group, said it had increased prices on a small number of products in recent weeks as it continued to come under pressure
  
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• Ebike entrepreneur Valeria Labi: ‘If I see a problem and I think it can be solved, I follow that thread’

  30-07-2024 15:00
  
  The British-born businesswoman behind Ghana’s first electric bike is out to woo Africa’s delivery riders away from costly and polluting petrol while cutting carbon emissionsValerie Labi, co-founder and chief executive of Wahu Mobility, enjoys a challenge. “If I see a problem and I think it can be solved, I follow that thread,” she says.The latest problem for Labi, whose company has produced Ghana’s first electric bicycle, is trying to persuade the country’s de
  
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• BP to hand investors $7bn this year as it expands oil operations

  30-07-2024 14:45
  
  Oil and gas company to increase dividend and buy-backs as quarterly profit beats forecastsBusiness live – latest updatesBP’s shareholders can expect a multibillion-dollar payout this year after the oil giant reported better than expected quarterly profits of almost $2.8bn (£2.2bn) and set out plans to develop a new oil hub in the Gulf of Mexico.The oil company has angered green groups by giving the go-ahead to develop potential oil resources of 10bn barrels from the new Kaskida
  
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• Winter Fuel Payments map reveals 10 UK towns worst hit - check your area

  30-07-2024 14:43 via express.co.uk
  
  Chancellor Rachel Reeves has scrapped the Winter Fuel Allowance for 10,000,000 pensioners.
  
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• What are winter fuel payments and who will lose and keep them?

  30-07-2024 14:24 via theguardian.com
  
  Rachel Reeves announced that the payments to pensionerswill no longer be universal in England and WalesOn Monday the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced a package of measures designed to close a £22bn hole in the public finances she said was “covered up” by the Conservative government.Among them was a surprise removal of winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and the abandoning of a long-delayed cap on what people pay for social care. Continue reading...
  
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• Standard Chartered plays down fears of US-China trade war under Trump

  30-07-2024 14:22
  
  Chief executive says tensions ‘not impacting’ business as bank reports pre-tax profits of $1.6bn for second quarterBusiness live – latest updatesFears of a China trade war erupting under a second Trump presidential term are overblown, according to bosses at Standard Chartered bank, as they suggested that the country’s real estate woes were “largely in the rearview mirror”.While the London-headquartered bank makes most of its money in Asia, particularly in Hong
  
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• France’s GDP gets €1bn lift from giant cruise ship as German economy shrinks

  30-07-2024 14:07
  Analyst says eurozone could have turned a corner as it avoids recession with 0.3% growthBusiness live – latest updatesThe delivery of the world’s second-largest cruise ship lifted France’s economy in the second quarter, according to official data that also showed Germany heading into a recession.Built in Saint-Nazaire for the cruise ship operator Royal Caribbean, the Utopia of the Seas added €1bn (£840m) to French economic output, helping to increase trade growth to
  
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• After winter fuel shocker - here's where Labour's Rachel Reeves will tax YOU next

  30-07-2024 14:00 via express.co.uk
  
  Chancellor Rachel Reeves has got the bit between her teeth and she isn't going to stop at scrapping the winter fuel payment. Her tax reign of terror has barely started.
  
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• Premium Bonds: NS&I savings cash warning over interest rates for holders

  30-07-2024 13:59 via express.co.uk
  
  NS&I overshot its target for net financing to the Government in 2023/24 after savers did not withdraw their cash as quickly as anticipated.
  
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• Hundreds of Post Office victims to get access to new compensation scheme

  30-07-2024 13:27
  About 900 operators with overturned convictions offered fixed settlement of £600,000 or can proceed to full claimBusiness live – latest updatesHundreds of wrongly convicted Post Office operators will be able to access a new compensation scheme, the UK government has announced.About 900 individuals had their criminal convictions quashed earlier this year by legislation introduced in May to exonerate people who had been wrongly prosecuted for financial shortfalls using evidence from th
  
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• Date for settling finance scandal affecting millions of car buyers pushed back

  30-07-2024 13:24 via express.co.uk
  
  Millions of people were allegedly hit with unfair charges associated with commission imposed on finance deals around vehicle purchases.
  
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• Buying sweets with a handful of coppers was a joy of my childhood. Is it goodbye to 1ps and 2ps? | Coco Khan

  30-07-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  The Treasury says it won’t mint new coins this year – causing great nostalgia, and a mass emptying out of old handbagsWhat are your strongest memories of the 1p coin, and its bigger cousin, the 2p piece? For me it’s childhood, and carrying fists full of coppers to the corner shop where the shopkeeper would let me make my own 20p bag of pick ’n’ mix known as a “mix up”. “Sherbet straws are 5p, not a penny,” he would remind me (an early lesson
  
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• Consumer duty applies to older 'off-sale' financial products from Wednesday

  30-07-2024 12:48 via express.co.uk
  
  The next phase of a duty which puts obligations on financial firms to improve consumer protection standards gets under way from Wednesday.
  
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• Chinese firms win record 11% EV share in Europe as buyers rush to beat tariffs

  30-07-2024 12:44
  State-owned SAIC, parent of the British brand MG, was responsible for biggest jump in sales in JuneBusiness live – latest updatesChinese carmakers secured a record 11% of the European electric vehicle market in June, as buyers raced to beat EU tariffs on imported EVs that came into force this month.The figures, which include the UK, show that about 23,000 battery electric vehicles were registered in June, up 72% on the previous month as consumers raced to beat the price hike in the EU. Con
  
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• Hunt ‘knowingly and deliberately’ lied about finances, says Reeves

  30-07-2024 10:35
  
  Chancellor says her predecessor at No 11 covered up true state of the public finances but Hunt rejects claimUK politics live – latest updatesRachel Reeves has accused Jeremy Hunt of lying about the state of the public finances, escalating a row with the Conservatives over claims they left a £22bn shortfall..The chancellor claimed that her predecessor “knowingly and deliberately … lied” to MPs and the country about public spending. Continue reading...
  
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• Diageo hit by first post-Covid sales fall but Guinness soars in Great Britain

  30-07-2024 09:55
  
  Drinks company says global sales of non-alcoholic version of its stout more than doubled, with beer up 18% overallBusiness live – latest updatesGlobal sales at the drinks multinational Diageo have declined for the first time since the Covid pandemic, although Great Britain bucked the trend thanks to a rise in the popularity of Guinness and related drinks.Sales increased 5% in Great Britain, a rise credited to the rise in popularity of the Irish stout and spin-offs such as an alcohol-free v
  
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• We have been left cold and wet in our leaking retirement home

  30-07-2024 08:00
  
  For 10 months McCarthy Stone have failed to repair the roof that is letting in waterI am 80 and my wife 79, and we live in a McCarthy Stone retirement development. The main reason we moved was to relieve ourselves of building maintenance worries, one of the advertised selling points. For the last 10 months, a leak in the communal roof has caused rainwater to drip through our bedroom ceiling. We have had to move all the furniture, and place buckets across the floor. Water has also run down the wa
  
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• The billions Britain needs are at Rachel Reeves’s fingertips, and no fiscal promises need be broken | Polly Toynbee

  30-07-2024 07:00
  The chancellor’s initial cuts must be followed by an autumn budget that taxes the richest and focuses on growthThat was authentic anger, Rachel Reeves’s indignation well justified as she thundered in the Commons at the inheritance she has been left. Labour is genuinely outraged at the destruction the former chancellor Jeremy Hunt deliberately inflicted, knowing his party would be out of there for years to come. They did indeed “put party before country”, as she said, by c
  
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• The sinister, shocking rise of dog attacks on postal workers

  30-07-2024 06:00
  
  In the past five years, 1,000 postal workers have had a finger partly or fully bitten off through a letterbox. Many others have experienced horrific, life-changing injuries, too. Why is this problem suddenly so much worse?Early in December last year, Kirsteen Hobson was covering a colleague’s round. A postal worker for the past nine years in the Highland port of Oban, Hobson remembers the date because she was really looking forward to a Christmas night out. She was on the communal balcony
  
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• Poor weather and cost of living crisis drive UK summer spending down

  30-07-2024 06:00
  
  Figures show weak consumer demand persisted in June and July as Bank of England ponders interest rate decision UK consumers have cut back on summer spending amid the impact of poor weather and the cost of living crisis, figures show, underscoring the challenge for the Bank of England ahead of its interest rate decision on Thursday.In a sign of weakness in consumer spending over the summer months, figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show that clothing and footwear prices fell for the
  
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• UK house prices expected to rise over second half of year, says Zoopla

  30-07-2024 01:01
  
  Larger number of homes for sale will help push up prices by 2%, says property portalHouse prices are expected to rise over the second half of the year across the UK, according to a forecast, with the market bolstered by more people selling their homes. Prices are likely to increase by 2% towards the end of 2024, Zoopla has predicted.The improved outlook for the housing market was the result of an increased number of homes for sale, the property portal said. The number of sales agreed in the four
  
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