Cryptocurrency founder has a wise head on young shoulders February 20, 2018 | City Talk As sales pitches go, it’s an unconventional one. In fact it’s more warning than advert, but you can’t argue with the logic behind it. The tweet was as stark as it was short: “Cryptocurrencies are still a new and hyper-volatile asset class, and could drop to near-zero at any time.” So wrote Vitalik Buterin, the [...]
Retail sales figures reveal the depth of Britain’s economic uncertainty February 19, 2018 | City Talk A debate which appeared all but settled at the tail end of 2017 is steadily reopening. The question of whether Britain’s economy will expand more this year than it did last year is looking increasingly finely balanced. Just a few months ago, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) cut its annual economic growth forecasts for [...]
Europe’s economy is booming but its politics risk boiling over February 15, 2018 | City Talk Could European political instability derail its economic recovery? It’s a question plenty of people in the markets are asking themselves at the moment. Germany remains without a functioning government. Martin Schultz, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) resigned on Tuesday despite – or because of – reaching agreement with Angela Merkel to enter a [...]
Shawbrook Bank’s backer has just raised another £400m to invest in financial services businesses February 14, 2018 Pollen Street Capital, the private equity firm which won shareholder approval to take over challenger bank Shawbrook last year, has raised a new £400m fund to invest in financial services businesses. The firm's third fund, which was initially targeting £350m, has already spend 53 per cent of the total on deals including Shawbrook, direct lending [...]
The Bank of England will almost certainly hike rates in May February 14, 2018 | City Talk The question of the next rise in UK interest rates has shifted definitively from if to when. Last week an uncharacteristically hawkish press conference by the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney left the markets in little doubt that it could come as early as May. At the start of the week the probability of [...]
Watchdog’s crackdown on CFDs may harm not help the markets February 13, 2018 Europe's financial watchdog is planning a crackdown on spread betting in a move that is causing great concern for investors and experts alike. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) wants to tighten regulations on contracts for difference (CFD) trading as it is concerned about investors. CFD trading is a form of spread betting that [...]
Can you make sense of what is going on in the equities markets? February 13, 2018 | City Talk If you can make sense of what is going on in equities markets right now you’ll make a fortune. After falling 2,000 points earlier in the week, Wall Street staged a bit of a recovery on Friday. That spurred on Asian and then European markets on Monday, which in turn once again fed into Wall [...]
Brexit lurks behind the Bank of England’s sudden hawkishness February 12, 2018 | City Talk Has the Bank of England developed a bit of a personality disorder? Looking at the mixed signals given by the Bank in the last six months, you might be forgiven for thinking so. The Bank’s Governor Mark Carney has a habit of keeping the markets guessing – something City analysts suspect he enjoys – and [...]
Brexit talks need direction of travel by June or the banks will leave the City February 8, 2018 | City Talk According to one of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) most senior regulators, British-based banks are running out of time to guarantee they have continued access to the single market. Sabine Lautenschläger, an ECB board member, said any British bank wanting to relocate to the euro area “should really have submitted its license application already”, and [...]
Global markets are correcting not crashing February 7, 2018 | City Talk When it came, the correction looked brutal: $4 trillion wiped off global stocks in a single day. But let’s not get carried away here. This was a correction rather than a rout whatever the newspapers might have us believe. The Dow Jones is still up 21% compared with the same time a year ago. The [...]
