Taylor Wimpey has reported “relatively robust” UK housing market conditions over the first half of 2010, having achieved 4,804 legal completions, up slightly from 4,702 a year earlier. The group sold 3,925 homes to private buyers and 866 to affordable housing providers, with the remainder joint ventures. Encouragingly, the developer’s cancellation rate scaled back to [...]
Today’s results from Barclays has reinforced that the banking sector is in recovery mode after the bank reported a 44% rise in profits. The bank, which is one of the few not to have received any financial help from the Government, said pre-tax profits came in at £3.95 billion for the six months to the [...]
Standard Chartered bank has today unveiled a 10% increase in profits for the half-year ending June 30. The bank, which has a strong presence in Asia, said pre-tax profit came in at £1.96 billion during the six month period, a rise from the £1.78 billion it made in the same period a year earlier. Commenting [...]
Lloyds Banking Group, which is 41% owned by the Government, has today reported it returned to profit in the first six months of 2010, revealing profits of £1.6 billion, against a loss of £4 billion a year earlier. The rise in profits was primarily due to reduced writedowns with bad loans falling from £13.4 billion [...]
The UK’s banking reporting season has got off to a flying start today after banking giant HSBC reported profits more than doubled, exceeding analysts expectations. Europe’s largest bank has today announced a pre-tax profit of $11.1 billion (£7 billion) for the six months to the end of June, compared with $5 billion in the same [...]
Gross mortgage lending increased in June, to an estimated £13.1 billion, with the total up 15% on a month earlier and 7% year-on-year, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). During the second quarter of the year lending stood at around £35 billion, having risen 17% compared with the previous three months and showing [...]
A report by Action Fraud, the national fraud reporting centre, has revealed more than 15,000 people have been the victims of fraud during the first six months of the year. The majority of the cases were online shopping and auction frauds and advance fee frauds – where services were not delivered. However, “romance” frauds (where [...]
House builder, Persimmon, has reported a rise in sales during the six months to the end of June 2010, with legal completions increasing by over 16% compared with a year earlier, to 4,657. Since early May, private sales have slowed down, partly in line with seasonal trends and partly due to uncertainty prior to the [...]
Housebuilder, Taylor Wimpey, has declared that the underlying shortfall of new build housing and strong levels of demand will continue to underpin UK house prices. The developer is wary of the “ongoing political and economic uncertainty” and warns that a shortage of building land will “artificially constrain” the recovery in new house building, in the [...]
Stagecoach has today reported a fall in first-half profit as a result of higher fuel and pension costs. The bus and rail operator posted a pre-tax profit of £75.5 million in the six months to the end of October – a fall of 28%. However, the profits exceeded market expectations and the group said it [...]
Britain’s largest building society, Nationwide, posted a slump in first half profits and provided a gloomy assessment of the housing market as it unveiled its results. Nationwide said pre-tax profits for the six months to September 30 were £143 million, a fall of 62% compared with the £374 million posted a year earlier. The company [...]
Mothercare appears to be bucking the trend amid British retailers after the group announced a profit of £10 million for the six months to 10 October, up 11% compared with a year earlier. Sales for the half-year period were £387.3 million compared with £359 million in the same period a year ago – a rise [...]
Profits at telecommunications giant British Telecom (BT) plummeted in the six months to 30 September by 45%, as a result of its major restructure, which resulted in the loss of 15,000 jobs. The company, which increased its cost-cutting target for the year from £1 billion to £1.5 billion, made a pre-tax profit of £547 million [...]
Struggling airline British Airways (BA) today posted a record first-half pre-tax loss of £292 million for the six months to 30 September. Following its results, the airline said it is planning 1,200 job cuts, which will take its total to almost 5,000 by the end of March. According to BA’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, “These [...]
Struggling airline British Airways (BA) has today posted a first-half pre-tax loss of £292 million for the six months to 30 September. The airline admitted during the summer it was fighting to survive and has since been looking at ways to cut costs. It is struggling to stay afloat during the global economic downturn which [...]
Eco-friendly bank Triodos posted a 50% rise in profit for the first half of this year. Net profit at the Dutch bank for the six months ending 30 June 2009 was €5.7 million, up from €3.7 million in the first half of 2008. Deposits at the bank increased 15%, growth which Triodos believes reflects disillusionment [...]
The world’s largest advertising group WPP has reported that pre-tax profits almost halved for the first half of 2009 but said the latter half of the year was “forecast to show a marked improvement in profitability”. Pre-tax profit for the six months to the end of June plunged 47% to £179 million, while like-for-like revenue [...]
Persimmon has joined Bovis Homes in reporting signs of stabilisation in the UK housing market, with selling prices holding their own across the UK and sales ahead of expectations during the summer months. According to the group, the mortgage market and the downward pressure of valuations on prices have both shown signs of improvement, although [...]
In presenting its interim results Bovis Homes has reported signs of house price stabilisation, during the second quarter of 2009. However, the housebuilder describes the UK market as remaining “fragile” with “mortgage valuations continuing to place downward pressure on negotiated prices”. The company completed 754 homes during the first six months of the year, compared [...]
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is the last bank to publish figures this week, has reported a pre-tax profit of £15 million for the first half of 2009. However, the bank also said it had written off £7.5 billion of bad debts during the period. The bank is 70% owned by the taxpayer [...]
Phone fraudsters stealing bank card pins
Fraudsters using a phone scam to trick bank card holders into revealing their pin numbers stole £750,000 in the first four months of this year. This is the same amount stolen through this scam in the whole of last year. The fraudster telephones a bank customer, often someone elderly or vulnerable, telling them that their [...]
FSA rules out ban on interest-only mortgages
Speculation that the Financial Services Authority would ban interest-only mortgages as part of its Mortgage Market Review has proved to be unfounded. However, lenders will be required to monitor the performance of the investment product taken out by the customer to repay the mortgage at the end of its term. Investments are performing poorly because [...]
Bank of England may end free in-credit banking
A director of the Bank of England has warned that official intervention could be considered to end the ‘dangerous myth of free in-credit banking’. Andrew Bailey has already spoken out against free banking in relation to the mis-selling of financial products. In a speech made available to media, he reiterated his concern, saying that it [...]
Bank of England votes against more economic stimulus
The Bank of England voted against a further round of quantitative easing, at its latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting. Just one member, David Miles, voted for further asset purchase to encourage growth in the UK economy, while the other eight members voted to keep the Bank’s quantitative easing programme steady at £325bn. The minutes [...]
Catalogue debt growing says helpline
Calls from people concerned about their debts with mail order catalogues accounted for more than 12 per cent of all calls received by National Debtline last year, compared with just 8 per cent in 2007. More people were concerned about catalogue debt than about payday loans, mortgage or rent, according to the Money Advice Trust [...]
Homeserve faces mis-selling investigation
HomeServe, which provides emergency insurance cover and domestic repairs to households in the UK, is to be investigated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Issues over the possible mis-selling of household emergency policies were uncovered last October during an internal review at the Walsall-based company. Homeserve’s call centre staff were found to be selling ‘Complete [...]
OFT warns Wonga over debt collection methods
Payday loan company Wonga used aggressive and misleading methods to collect debts from customers, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has found. Wonga sent letter and emails to certain customers suggesting they had committed fraud and threatening to report them to the police if they did not act in the way Wonga suggested. The company [...]
NS&I re-launches investment account
National Savings & Investments (NS&I) has re-launched its Investment Account at a higher interest rate than it previously offered. The account now offers 0.75 per cent before tax, compared with between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent previously, depending on the account balance. Deposits and withdrawals on the account can no longer be made at Post [...]
Rightmove reports property downsizing trend
Two in five property owners planning to sell in the next year are planning to ‘trade down’, compared with one in four who plan to ‘trade up’. A survey by property website Rightmove found that moving to a smaller home is the main reason for moving in nine out of the ten regions in the [...]
More people failing to save for retirement
The proportion of people with no pension savings has grown from 20 per cent to 22 per cent over the past year, according to Scottish Widows’ latest survey. The pension provider surveyed 5,200 adults in the UK, aged 30 or over, and earning at least £10,000 a year, for its annual review of pensions. Ian [...]
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