Standard Life sleepwalks towards a pay revolt May 13, 2016 First Schroders, now Standard Life: it’s turning into a season of grand City institutions firing bullets into their own feet. Fresh from the calamitous handling of Michael Dobson’s elevation to the chair at Schroders, its Scottish-based peer is making an even bigger pig’s ear of a process it should be able to navigate in its [...]
Carney ignites recession row with Brexit warning May 13, 2016 Bank of England governor Mark Carney sparked an intense political row yesterday after he said that a vote to leave the European Union could plunge Britain into recession. Former chancellor Lord Lamont slammed Carney’s “unwise” choice of words, while two Conservative members of the influential Treasury Select Committee – which is appointed by Parliament to [...]
Lloyds shareholders won’t do what they’re told May 12, 2016 Shareholders at Lloyds Banking Group have clearly not caught shareholder spring fever, passing all resolutions at its AGM today, despite an influential shareholder advisory group urging them vote against the remuneration report. Shareholders approved the remuneration report by 97.7 per cent, which puts chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio in receipt of £8.8m for 2015, down from £11.5m the year [...]
Safe as houses: Aldermore Group mortgage origination up 60 per cent May 12, 2016 Aldermore Group today revealed that the number of loans it had created in its first quarter of the year had leapt up, causing its share price to shortly follow suit. Loan origination for the challenger bank rose to £814m for the first quarter of 2016, up 43 per cent on the prior year's £568m. Mortgage origination was [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland to slash 200 UK jobs and shut branches May 12, 2016 Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to slash around 200 jobs from its retail unit, in the latest round of cuts to the lender's workforce as part of a wider restructuring of the business. The planned job losses, which were reported by Reuters, mean that RBS will have axed more than one in 10 positions at its [...]
Barclays rules out Android Pay, going it alone with own mobile pay app May 12, 2016 Barclays is going it alone when it comes to mobile pay, rolling out its own contactless payment app on Android to all its customers, eschewing Google's own soon to launch Android Pay service. The bank's customers will be able to pay with just a swipe of their debit card from June with Barclays' Contactless Mobile [...]
Worldpay set to team up with accountancy software firms May 11, 2016 Payments processor Worldpay is set to team up with some of the UK’s largest accountancy software firms as it continues to move towards serving small and medium-sized businesses. Worldpay yesterday unveiled a tablet-based till to further its push into the SME market and is in talks with accountancy software companies over potential tie-ups that would [...]
Former Barclays banker pleaded guilty to Libor-rigging offence May 11, 2016 A former Barclays banker pleaded guilty to offences related to Libor-rigging around 19 months ago, fraud squad prosecutors said in court today. Peter Johnson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud in October 2014 after charges were brought against him earlier that year, but a reporting restriction preventing him from being named was not lifted until [...]
Confident challenger OneSavings Bank reveals net loans and advances growth May 11, 2016 OneSavings Bank revealed today that its net loans and advances had grown in a trading statement ahead of its AGM, with its chief executive noting that the challenger bank remained "confident" for the year ahead. The bank, which launched in 2011, reported that net loans and advances grew by £460m in its first quarter of the year, [...]
Visa Europe records three billion contactless payments over the last 12 months May 10, 2016 Card company Visa has recorded three billion contactless transactions in Europe over the past year. In April alone, European consumers used their cards 360m times, clocking in at almost 140 transactions per second. Contactless now accounts for one in every five Visa card payments in Europe, up from one in 60 in 2013. In the [...]
