Simon Moon from This is Money replies: Bradford & Bingley was nationalised by the Government in late September 2008. Its savings and branch business was sold to Santander, the Spanish bank that owns Abbey and Alliance & Leicester. B&B’s mortgages and other business operations were taken into public ownership by the Treasury, which at the […]
Professor William Perraudin is chair of Finance at Imperial College Business School .
What is it with macroeconomists? You think you understand how the economy works and then they come up with some subtle new monetary operation called ‘quantitative easing’.
With interest rates rapidly approaching zero, central banks in many countries right now face […]
High Street banks could start charging customers to have accounts in a bid to recoup falling profits related to lower rates.
The Bank of England has cut rates from 5% to an all-time low of 1% since October and was expected to act again today. Banks make profits through their ‘interest rate margin’ - the […]
The Bank of England is expected to announce today that it is ready to embark on a programme of ‘ quantitative easing’.
A letter from Chancellor Alistair Darling, giving permission to the Bank to go ahead with the move, is likely to be published this morning.
The Bank’s monetary policy committee, which sets interest rates, decided […]
A predictive dialer is a computerized system that will automatically dial batches of telephone numbers and the agents assigned in the sales or other campaigns get connected to the clients. Predictive dialers are also known as auto dialers and they are widely used in the call centers.
Telemarketing organizations generally use predictive dialer systems making B2C […]
If you are thinking to start up your own business, you have to make a very important decision in choosing the right franchise. You will be able to overcome some of the stress and guess if you have chosen the right franchise. Most of the reputable franchisor will make you go through a rigorous screening […]
Demands for fresh bailouts for financial giants HSBC and AIG sparked a rout in global stocks.
The bad news from both sides of the Atlantic pushed the FTSE down 204.26 points to 3625.83, the first time it has closed below 3,700 since April 2003, just after British and US troops invaded Iraq.
Investors switched into panic-selling […]
Savings deposits at Tesco Personal Finance, the grocer’s banking arm, have almost doubled in the past six months.
More accounts were opened in December of last year than the whole of 2007.
It has around 500,000 savings account holders.
Yesterday Tesco unveiled plans to recruit more than 200 finance workers in Edinburgh.
Tesco Personal Finance was set up […]
HSBC is following similar steps taken by Royal Bank of Scotland Halifax Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered last year.
Despite the size of the offer, HSBC chairman, Stephen Green, has asserted that the bank is launching the rights issue from a position of strength.
He said: ‘We are well capitalised, liquid and […]
The pay cuts are expected to come from a shift to ’short working’ as businesses reduce the working week because of low demand.
The situation has echoes of the three-day week of the 1970s, which was triggered by power shortages linked to the miners’ strike.
The problems for the private sector are in stark contrast to […]
© 2008 Daily Financial News