October 30, 2009
It has already been six months since house prices have started to rise. Very worrying state of the market have left us with uncertainty and continues to grow bad feelings about the economy. Accordingly to the closed watched index, the prices are still on the rise, but slower than during the summer, it’s slowing down. It is still 13.1 per cent form the peak which we have seen in 2007 but experts agree that the marked received a boost after the mortgages have been lowered after October 2007.
The very sluggish improvement in the time needed for the properties to become available on the market also means that there is a slowdown in the constructions area. Maybe this time development companies will learn how to build and finish their jobs properly.
October 27, 2009
Barclays has started to make some really good moves recently. They already are getting stronger on the market, but this time they were granted a really good deal. Standard Life Bank was bought for much less than analysts expected, just £226m. Specialists estimated that the price the company was bought for its 23 per cent discounted and its standard value would be £293m.
Meanwhile Barclays have spotted a niche in the market for mortgages ad extended the mortgage share on the marked also increasing their profit. The shares fell last Friday by 2.45 per cent while Standard Life Bank share closed down 1.5 per cent.
Source: FT.com
September 30, 2009
Michael Dell, the owner of the worldwide IT service distribution company has recently announced a calculated bid of 3.9bn to buy Texas neighbours Perot systems. This would help lessen the competition Dell faces and would also help increase the total profit.
It is expected that current employees of Perot would keep their jobs as they already have the revelent training in that industry and it would also keep unemployment numbers down. If Dell become successful in their bid, not only will they be one of the leading IT services worldwide (even more than now) but they would also have a more widespread public following in Texas, where’s now the general public is split between the two companies.
September 30, 2009
Two of the largest phone companies in the United Kingdom, T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telekom) and Orange (French Telekom) are looking to further their companies by merging as one. They both currently sit behind O2 and Vodafone, with Orange at 3rd and T-Mobile in fourth. By joining together, the net profit is obviously expected to increase and both companies would total their profits 50/50, meaning they would have over 37% of the United Kingdom’s mobile phone user base. This expected statistic would make them the leading phone company in the United Kingdom (being 10% above O2).
September 30, 2009
The United Kingdom’s third largest mobile phone operator, Orange, has finally managed to exclusively sign a deal with Apple, ( the iPhone’s owners and creators) to sell the iPhone in Britain. This is going to be a massive setback for O2, the United Kingdom’s largest phone company (owning 27%), as they previously were the only company to have the rights.
Profits for Orange are expected to increase vastly and this deal is sure to please current and future Orange customers. The deal was agreed today and the popular Apple phone will be hitting many Orange stores nationwide within the upcoming weeks.
September 30, 2009
The United Kingdom’s business secretary Peter Mandelson today announced that the car scrappage scheme would now be extended to cover a further 100,000 vehicles. Although this is only a small fraction of the number of cars needed in this scheme, the labour party member has assured that, although they can’t do everything, they can do something.
This scheme helps recycle old metal from unused cars in an attempt to reuse the scraps for new cars. It is expected to rise with the new year, with the labour government promising more and more ‘benefits’ to the general public in the coming weeks.
September 30, 2009
Only since the ‘dotcom boom’ have levels in trading surged to such a level. The smaller investors across the country have created huge surges in the trading industry, with auction site ebay and on-line stores play, Amazon and HMV all hugely increasing in profits.
This is a great help to reduce congested traffic on the road, which helps reduce the amount of petrol used daily (as individuals wouldn’t have to drive, pay for transport to reach the desired store) and is also a profit to potential buyers. Trading websites are often reached via posters in-store advertising the product offers etc.
July 31, 2009
An independent review of the fee charging debt management sector has been published by the Money Advice Trust which highlights the rapid growth in this sector. According to the review in 1999 there were less than 40 companies who offered a debt management service and there are now over 150 companies in the UK. Money Advice said
“their findings had thrown up a great disparity in the way customers of these debt management companies were treated”
They welcomed a review by the Office of Fair Trading into this sector.
It also showed that many customers were unaware that a free service was also available and that if they had known, they would of rather gone with such service.
July 31, 2009
It is looking like another hidden tax is going to be introduced on the work force in England. Nottingham City Council are trialing a charge of £250 per parking space in the city centre aimed at commuters, and if successful rolled out to many other cities in England. Now this isn’t so bad if public transport was subsidized, but taking Manchester as an example, the train can cost up to £6 each way to commute. This is just not feasible for the majority of workers and only for the top earners of the city centre companies.
Surely this could lead to companies relocating out of city centre into smaller town business parks, which will do nothing to local economies
July 31, 2009
On hearing the news about the high amount of shops closures this year was very sad but expected, where this really hurts are in smaller cities and towns, mostly the cities built around manufacture and industry destroyed by the Thatcher reign. As I was originally born and bred in one of these areas I saw firsthand, the local city councils desperately trying to prop up local economies by building new shopping centre’s and investing in retail, but these are the first places where major chains are going to closed down.
More than 12,000 independent shops are of estimated to of closed over the past year resulting in the removal of the heart and soul and more importantly the sense of community in local towns. It is easy to see how a recession can lead to many social problems as well.
Further Points, Products, and Services: