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 [...]
Lloyds Banking Group is the latest bank to announce its first half results and the bank, which is 43% owned by the taxpayer, has slumped to a £4 billion loss. While the bank had warned investors that it would make a loss this year – it wasn‘t as severe as many analysts had originally feared. [...]
UBS, which is Switzerland’s largest, bank, has reported a second quarter loss of SwFr1.4 billion (£790 million). However, the loss is marginally better than the first quarter loss of SwFr1.98 billion (£1.2 billion). The Swiss banking giant said it remained cautious about its prospects, in view of the challenging environment. UBS is among one of [...]
Nationalised lender Northern Rock has today reported a pre-tax loss of £724.2 million for the first half of the year, compared with a loss of £585.4 million in the same period a year ago. Northern Rock collapsed at the onset of the credit crunch in autumn 2007 after savers staged a nationwide run on the [...]
Three HSBC firms have been fined £3.2 million for losing customers’ confidential details, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said today. However, the fines would have totalled more than £4.5 million had the three firms not agreed to settle at an early stage, therefore receiving a 30% discount. According to the FSA, HSBC Life lost an [...]
Kesa Electricals, the company that owns Comet, is predicting a challenging year ahead after the group reported a pre-tax loss of £81.8 million in the year to April, compared with a pre-tax profit of £128.8 million the previous year. The company, which also owns the Darty business in France, has been hit by the recession [...]
It has been confirmed this morning that West Bromwich Building Society has agreed a deal that will see the 160-year-old institution saved from collapse. The deal will see £182.5 million of subordinated debt converted into capital to strengthen the mutual’s balance sheet. The society said the new deal will “materially strengthen the society’s core tier [...]
Europe’s largest no-frills airline, Ryanair, has posted its first annual loss, which it attribute to rising fuel costs, lower fares and the write-down on the value of its stake in Irish rival Aer Lingus. The airline made a net loss for the 12 months to the end of March of €169 million, compared with a [...]
British Airways (BA) has announced a pre-tax loss of £401 million for the 12 months to the end of March, compared with profits of £922 million the previous year. While the loss is double what analysts’ estimates, it also represents the biggest loss since the company was privatised in 1987. Many airlines continue to experience [...]
Japanese electronics giant Sony has today announced its first annual loss in 14 years. The group reported a loss of 98.9 billion yen (£685 million) for the year ended 31 March, against a profit of 369.4 billion yen the previous year. Following the company’s first back to back loss since 1958, Chief Executive Officer, Howard [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has today reported a pre-tax loss of £44 million for the first quarter of 2009, against a profit of £479 million for the same three month period in 2008. Meanwhile, the bank wrote off £4.9 billion during the period while post-tax losses totalled £857 million. At the end of February [...]
For the first time in over 23 years, Microsoft has experienced its first ever year-on-year decline and the fall in sales is expected to continue for at least another three months. However, investors had feared that the company’s results could have been worse. Net profit at Microsoft fell by 32 percent to $2.98bn as revenue [...]
Norwich Union Life, the UK arm of the insurance business of Aviva PLC, said today that it will cut around 1,100 jobs in the UK, in order to make its operations more efficient. The announcement follows on from Aviva Chief Executive, Andrew Moss, saying that there will be a round of job cuts across insurance [...]
Housebuilder Bellway has reported that it has seen house prices fall by up to 40% from their peak in August 2007. In presenting its half-year interim results for the six months to the end of January, the firm also revealed that it sold 2,014 homes during the period, down from 3,252 a year earlier. The [...]
Fortis Insurance has reported its 2008 results with a full year net profit of €6 million, which came despite €639 million of investment losses. All of the insurance unit’s profit was made in its Belgium branch, with the international insurance business only breaking even. The insurance unit’s profit was dwarfed, however, by the Fortis banking [...]
Legal & General has cut its final dividend for the first time in living memory following a £1.5 billion pre-tax loss, compared to an £848 million profit in 2007. The UK’s fourth largest insurer slashed its dividend in half to 2.05p per share in a bid to preserve capital strength. The cut will save the [...]
Northern Rock has reported that its home repossessions rose by 63% last year to 3,620. Arrears also soared with 17,264 borrowers three months or more behind with their repayments at the end of 2008, up from 3,492 at the close of 2007. The rise takes the percentage of the bank’s total mortgage book in arrears [...]
US insurance company AIG has today announced a fourth quarter loss of $61.7 billion – the largest corporate loss in US history. The second largest quarterly loss of $54 billion was announced by Time Warner in 2002 following its merger with AOL. AIG’s loss is the equivalent of $678 million per day in the October [...]
As widely expected by analysts, Lloyds Banking Group has revealed a £10.8 billion loss for 2008 at HBOS – the struggling lender it acquired last month. Following the news, shares in the bank lost 12% to 66p and said 2009 would be another “challenging year”. The group controls around a quarter of British customers’ personal [...]
Property developer Barratt Homes has followed rival Redrow in reporting a substantial loss for 2008. The company blames falling property prices, a shortage of mortgage funding and writedowns on the value of its land bank for a pre-tax loss of £592.4 million, compared with a profit of £192.4 million in 2007. The group’s average selling [...]
M&S Money launches 3% cash ISA
M&S Money has launched an Advantage Cash ISA paying 3 per cent, and which allows transfers in from other ISAs. It can be opened with a minimum deposit of £100 lump sum followed by minimum monthly deposits of £25. The 3% rate is variable, but there is no short-term bonus so the return won’t plummet [...]
Google suspends UK Compare Mortgages site
Google has closed its UK mortgage comparison site which it launched in July last year, after it proved to be less popular than expected. Mortgage comparison sites are designed to allow visitors to compare mortgages quickly and easily without having to visit each lender’s individual site. Google was competing with several well-established comparison sites, including [...]
AA launches ‘black-box’ policy for young drivers
The AA is launching an innovative car insurance policy called Drivesafe which could help younger drivers save up to £850 a year. Younger drivers already pay substantially higher premiums than other motorists and these costs are increasing. A new study by Confused.com suggests insurance costs for younger driver have gone up by 5.7 per cent [...]
ATOL scheme updated to protect online bookers
ATOL, a financial protection scheme managed by the Civil Aviation Authority, is being extended to protect up to six million more holidays a year. The scheme ensures that holiday makers do not lose out financially if a travel company collapses, and that they are not stranded abroad. An increase in the number of holidays booked [...]
Home repossessions lowest for four years
The number of UK homes repossessed fell to 36,200 in 2011, significantly below the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ forecast of 40,000, and lower than 2010 when 37,100 homes were repossessed. With interest rates remaining low and lenders adopting a sympathetic attitude to customers in financial difficulty, repossessions fell to their lowest level since 2007. However, [...]
Monthly pay lasting just 17 days
Workers are running out of money just 17 days after receiving their monthly pay, according to new research by the Halifax bank. This means that the average UK worker spends half the month worrying about money. The study, based on the responses of more than 2,000 adults, found that 10 per cent of workers start [...]
Women disadvantaged by auto-enrolment changes
Government proposals to increase the auto-enrolment threshold to £10,000 could put 1.8 million women at risk of missing out on a pension, the TUC has warned. Under the auto-enrolment scheme, which will be phased in from October, private sector employers will automatically enrol workers between the age of 22 years and the state pension age, [...]
Emergency household repairs company Homeserve is taking longer than expected to get back on track after its operations were suspended last October. The company expected customer numbers to fall by 5% this year but it has increased this estimate to 8% and announced the loss of 200 jobs. It estimates that renewal revenue in 2013 [...]
Sale rumoured for Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks
There is growing speculation that National Australia Bank (NAB) may sell Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank after the Australian parent company announced a strategic review of the two banks’ operations. The Australian economy is performing well and NAB reported strong profits for the final quarter of 2011 but with the UK economy at a virtual [...]
More women experiencing debt difficulties
Women in Debt, which offers female-focused debt advice, has warned that the number of UK women facing serious debt has grown significantly over recent years. The organisation believes that more women will need advice on solving debt problems in the future because they are building up an unsustainable level of indebtedness. Women in Debt’s director, [...]
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