High street banks ramp up SME lending to highest since 2022 June 16, 2025 High street banks are scaling up their lending to small businesses, with the first quarter of 2022 hitting the highest amount since 2022. Lenders issued £4.6bn worth of loans in the first three months of the year marking a 14 per cent year-on-year jump. The rise was driven by a surge of lending to agriculture, [...]
Lammy set for further talks with counterparts as Iran and Israel exchange fire June 14, 2025 David Lammy is expected to spend the day in talks with counterparts across the Middle East after Iran launched retaliatory attacks against Israel overnight. The Foreign Secretary will be briefed by officials on Saturday and will speak to figures in the Middle East and elsewhere. It comes after conversations with representatives from Iran, Jordan and [...]
Free Thinking: Mel Stride on Farage’s ‘fantasy’ economics and why Tories are different June 13, 2025 City PM's Opinion and Features Editor sits down with Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride for a very special episode of Free Thinking.
Starmer calls Israeli strikes ‘concerning’ June 13, 2025 Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear programme. In what the Israeli Defence Forces called a “preemptive attack,” 200 fighter jets struck 100 targets, including Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility, according to Israel. The PM called reports of strikes “concerning,” calling for Israel and Iran to “step back and reduce tensions urgently.” [...]
Oil prices surge after Israel attacks Iran June 13, 2025 Oil prices spiked by more than nine per cent following Israeli strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear programme, in the most dramatic jump in more than three years. Meanwhile, the price of gold hit $3,427 – up 1.2 per cent during Asian trading hours. Israel launched strikes on Tehran early on Friday, rekindling fears of a full-scale [...]
UK housing market: ‘Not fixed, but less broken’ June 12, 2025 Decades of underinvestment, underbuilding and overegulation have clobbered the housing market. The UK is now short about 4.3m homes, with the worst crisis in cities. Labour, which made solving that crisis a central mission of its first year in government, has made tracks to get Britain building again – reforming planning, trying to bridge the [...]
Week in Business: Is Rachel Reeves About to Drop a Tax Bombshell on the UK Economy? June 12, 2025 Despite talk of growth and renewal, the economic warning lights are flashing, and experts now predict another £20bn tax raid.
FTSE 100 seals record high after shaking off investor nerves June 12, 2025 The FTSE 100 finally sealed a new record closing high on Thursday after falling a whisker short the previous two trading sessions. The UK’s flagship index rose 0.2 per cent to – besting March’s record of 8,871.31. The index also beat its previous intraday high after hitting 8,892.36 in afternoon trading. Endeavour mining topped the [...]
UK trade with US falls apart after Trump tariff blitz June 12, 2025 Exports to the US – the country the UK trades with the most with – saw its largest monthly decrease in April since records began, official data has shown. The onset of President Trump’s trade war with some of his closest allies and foes put governments on standby as major forecasters warned the world economy [...]
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang: ‘Praise and promise are useless’ without UK AI infrastructure June 12, 2025 “Praise and promise are completely useless” without AI infrastructure, Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, told City PM when asked about the effusive comments he made on Britain’s AI capabilities just a couple of days prior. At London Tech Week on Monday, the tech heavyweight dubbed ‘AI godfather’ lauded the UK’s AI talent, but flagged a critical lack [...]
