In 1984 Birmingham-based Midland Bank, then one of the UK’s big four banking groups, made a radical decision that fundamentally changed Britain’s banking sector. Concerned about losing customers, it decided to ditch fees for cheques, statements and standing orders. Within a year it signed up to 450,000 new customers and […]
Britains
Britain’s ‘Warren Buffett’ to launch trust to buy small businesses
Mr Ashword-Lord said he and his team had identified some 30 candidates from existing holdings in UK Buffettology and his firm’s other fund, Free Spirit. The trust would not be a “mirror” of either of those portfolios, he said, because the valuation was more important when buying new stocks and the trust […]
Former M&G star manager leaves Britain’s oldest fund
Veteran fund manager Tom Dobell is stepping down from Britain’s oldest fund – M&G’s £1.4bn Recovery fund, after more than 20 years and a recent period of extremely poor returns. Over the past decade the fund has made investors just 14pc while the FTSE All Share index – the fund’s benchmark and a […]
Arm’s sale is a tragedy that will undermine Britain’s future security
What happened to Dominic Cummings? To national tech champions? It’s all very well snapping up OneWeb, a satellite company with not many of the wrong kind of satellites for our purposes, but companies like Arm are where the battle to control the future will really be played out. Surely ministers […]
US tech giant Nvidia buys Britain’s Arm for $40bn
The US technology giant Nvidia has confirmed the $40bn (£31bn) takeover of Arm, one of Britain’s biggest tech companies, and promised to invest in the UK amid questions about Arm’s future. Nvidia and Japan’s SoftBank, which currently owns Arm, announced the deal late on Sunday. It comes four years after […]
Britain’s second lockdown will be even more terrible than the first
There will be intense structural change, industries will be decimated and city centres will never look the same again. At least construction sites, factories and warehouses will be kept open this time, unlike when the original lockdown was imposed. The Government cannot afford another collapse in GDP. But the economy […]
The most affordable spots for first-time buyers in Britain’s booming cities
Midlands Soho & Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham Average price of a flat or terrace: £89,703 Blazing the way for house price growth in the centre of the country is Birmingham. For around £90,000, first-time buyers can pick up a home in the city’s hip Jewellery Quarter, where old diamond dealers and […]
Britain’s once-popular digital banks face a bruising reality
The business reported losses of £52m in 2019, up from £25m for the previous year. Despite this, chief executive Anne Boden remains optimistic about the company’s prospects based on its performance during lockdown. “Our costs are very much in control. If we continue on that trajectory, we will break even […]
Britain’s biggest businesses will work from home until 2021
Vodafone said that those employees who can work remotely “will continue to do so until the end of 2020” and BP said that the “overwhelming majority” will stay out of the office for the foreseeable future. British American Tobacco said that workers have “managed the transition to working from home […]
Labour’s right, Boris needs to stump up a few more billion for Britain’s parents
Money & Daddy is a weekly column about parental finances, published on Wednesday mornings. Got a topic or problem you want me to tackle? Email me: [email protected] The amount of money the Government is now prepared to spend – and the levels of debt it feels justified in taking on […]