Friday, 24th September 2010

Sir John Vickers today outlined plans for a much deeper and wider investigation into the UK banking business than had been anticipated, setting out a wide range of options that could force big banks to split in two and separate their "casino" arms and high street businesses or cause banks such as Lloyds to be dismantled.

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Frday 24th September 2010

The way some economists talk about it, you might think that the future of the world economy rests on a cruise ship. But the QE2 getting central bankers and City types excited will not be setting sail from Southampton any time soon. No, what they're referring to is another round of quantitative easing, or pumping billions into financial markets in order to jumpstart an economy stuck in a rut.

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Sunday 19th September 2010

The outlook for the UK economy is far from rosy. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Commission reckon that growth will slow next year.

And many of Britain's directors are not confident about the outlook for their businesses.

It seems that speculation over the severity of the Government's austerity measures has spooked them. So, as businesses invest less, scale back expansion and curtail hiring new staff, the UK economy could quickly lose momentum.

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Thursday, September 9th 2010

The total value of payments in the UK economy fell 0.6% in the second quarter of 2010, according to the latest data from the Payments Council.

Cheque usage dropped by £21.5bn, down 10% compared to the same period in 2009 as businesses and consumers switched to faster and more convenient electronic payments and cards.  Every day of the quarter, on average a staggering 290,000 fewer cheques were written than the year before - over three fewer per second.

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Thurs 6th May, 2010

More than 280,000 people will be forced to pay the new 50p rate of income tax in 2010/11, according to a report in the Telegraph.

The paper says official figures disclosed last night show HMRC expects to collect an additional £10bn in income tax, with £9bn of that coming from those on wages above £40,000.

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