After a tough couple of months for the retail sector, sales have bounced back in February according to figures just released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Sales were actually up by 2.2% which goes someway to negate the fall in figures seen in January which was put down to severe weather conditions throughout the month.
Although sales went up there is still concern for the retail sector, as growth continues to struggle due to the downturn in the economy. Food sales were one area that did particularly poorly which the BRC put down to reserves bought in January, however sales of clothes and homeware did see a rise due in part to the number of people who had put off purchasing such items during the cold weather.
It remains to be seen if growth will be as slow before the upcoming election.
France’s largest retail bank, Credit Agricole, recently announced its quarterly results. A disappointing level of profit was largely explained by major losses in Greece.
The bank made £380million in the fourth quarter of 2009, but predictions had been for around 10 per cent more than that. However, this followed on from a deficit in the fourth quarter of 2008. In all, Credit Agricole profited by over a billion euros in 2009 – a 10 per cent improvement on the preceding year.
The bank is confident that their position will remain strong into 2010, saying that initial trends confirm this view.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has recently announced its 2009 financial results and the ailing bank is down £3.6billion.
The loss is largely as a result of bad loans, but regardless of this dire position, bonuses are being paid to the tune of £1.3billion. The reasoning is that productive staff have been lost through not paying good enough bonuses in the past.
However, this will come as unwelcome news to many in the UK as 84 per cent of the bank is owned by the public after the government was forced to step in towards the end of 2008 as the financial difficulties threatened the future of RBS.
The cost of the UK’s membership in the European Union is set to rise by around 60% in 2009/10. Currently the United Kingdom pays out a total contribution of £4.1bn, but that is set to rise to £6.4bn over the next year or so.
According to the UK treasury, they believe it is fair to “share the burden of membership with new accession countries”, a statement which is opposed by the Tory party who claim it is a sign of “Labour’s incompetence” since they have been in power.
The figures show a dramatic rise from £53 per household in 2004 to a potential £260 per household in 2010, signifying a possible 490% increase.
The Bank of England has released their quarterly Inflation Report, a document that summaries the UK’s financial progress over that period. The report warns that 2010 will be “fragile” for the economy in the UK in terms of recovering from the recession that is currently upon the nation.
Despite the Bank recently adding an additional £50bn of new money in to circulation in an attempt to boost a turnaround in the current downwards spiral, the Banks governor Mervyn King has stated that more is needed, they “estimate…a further £50bn” will be needed to try and boost the overall economic growth.
The Lloyds Banking Group, which is the largest bank in the UK following their merger with struggling HBOS in January, has posted huge losses of around £4bn in the first six months of 2009.
The significant loss figure is being attributed to spiralling debts that were absorbed by Lloyds from HBOS after the takeover of the bank. The actual cause is thought to be because Lloyds have had to write-down a large number of the HBOS assets as their value has either depreciated or was less than originally estimated.
Lloyds Banking Group is 43% state-owned after they accepted a sum of money during their takeover of HBOS, which brought up to £10.7bn of debt from the bank, which was facing serious financial diffculties at the time.
Energy performance certificates are all over the news and Internet recently, they are so much in the news that people are starting to use them as a every day word such as E P C and other variations. The term refers to a certificate you need when trying to sell your home. Here are the rules
“Energy Performance Certificate - new rules This bit is important because under new regulations, from October 1st 2008, you - the homeowner - are responsible for the Energy Performance Certificate. So you need to check your estate agent doesn’t trip-up and potentially land you both with a £200 fine, per instance! From October 1st 2008, an Energy Performance Certificate must now be available:
when the property is viewed;
when written information is provided on request;
before contracts are exchanged.
Sales particulars: Displaying the Energy Performance Certificate
As a minimum, the asset ratings graphs (see top picture) from your EPC must be included within the sales particulars (including electronic) if they contain two or more of the following:
A photograph of the building or any room inside the building
A floor plan of the building
A description of the size of the rooms in the building.
Advertising
With window cards and newspaper adverts you are not legally obliged to include the rating graphs, although the Government suggests it would be good practice to do so if they contain any two of the above items.
Commissioned
By ‘commissioned’, the Government means all documents - including the EPC - within your HIP must have been ordered with a commitment to pay. There should also be an expectation that all documents will be made available within 28 days. If they are not (unlikely in most cases), the person responsible for marketing your home must make reasonable efforts to obtain them as soon as possible, or risk pain of penalty (see below). From 31st December 2008 a Home Information Pack must be available from the time it is first placed on the market (subject to Govt review) - This date ends the transition period allowing Hips only to be commissioned before marketing commences.
Enforcement penalty fine (£200)
If you - or your estate agent - is responsible for actively marketing your home, there is pain in store for not obtaining a HIP: £200 penalty fine (repeatable for each day). The EPC, however, is solely the homeowners responsibility; although it would be a daft estate agent that attempts to market a home without an EPC in the HIP because they too would kop for a fine. Estate agents are automatically reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) too; with continued naughtiness leading to a banning order.”
Personally I think the whole thing is another way the government is making money and probably putting thousands of pounds worth of claims into there own greedy pockets through the expenses claims that there has been massive uproar over. What do you think of E P C’ s? Technically the information that i given will either make your house more salable or not, as if you are given a rating of F or G then your house will have a high running cost when it comes to things like heating.
Applicants for mortgages are shocked to know that one in ten applications that fulfil all criteria for eligibility of loan is being rejected by lenders.
Nearly 9% of vetted mortgage applications have been rejected this year as compared to just 2.3% in 2007, even though all applications were meeting lender’s terms and conditions. Lenders found different reasons to reject them.
According to an agency spokesman, lenders have become too strict with mortgage criteria – even those applications where you would expect no hitch in acceptance are being flatly rejected.
Any blemishes in the credit history of an applicant can result in rejection. All debt repayments pertaining to store cards, credit cards, loans etc. have to be made on time. Details of defaults are held on borrower’s personal files for 6 years and count against him/her at the time of assessment of credit rating.
Assessing repayment capacity of borrower is the key for lenders. The most borrowers should expect is 4 times their salary, anything above this is not likely to be sanctioned.
According to a mortgage broker, lenders are too strict and getting a deal above 85% LTV is extremely difficult. Although they are advertising attractive rates on mortgages of 90% LTV, many borrowers fail to qualify despite good credit score.
Mosaic Fashion which was put into administration, is being partly bought back by Icelandic bank Kaupthing. The deal would save around 8,700 jobs, although remaining 4,200 jobs would still be at risk. Read the rest of this entry »
A report by the Work Foundation urges extension of emergency funding to manufacturing firms if the government really intended to help the UK’s “real economy.”
Work Foundation argues that manufacturing stood best chance of an economic upturn in the backdrop of uncertain performance by the financial services sector and should be provided same access to fund as given to financial services.
According to Ian Brinkley, director at Work Foundation, writing off modern manufacturing, which was getting battering from recession, would be a big mistake. He suggests that we must constantly think what we will be going to live on in future. Ian advocates that as much of industrial base as possible needed to be preserved, since once lost it would be impossible to get it back again. According to him manufacturing sector is highly important for retention as well as creation of jobs, exports and GDP.
Work Foundation report recommends more support for the much transformed UK manufacturing in the area of research and development. TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, welcomed Work Foundation report which recognised importance of manufacturing to the economy and post-recession future. He added that European countries acknowledged importance of retaining skilled teams during recession, it is therefore necessary that government comes forward to help firms preserve knowledge and skills of their workforce during recession.
Derek Simpson, leader of Unite, was glad that Work Foundation was joining their campaign in seeking support for manufacturing during recession.