Motor finance: Lloyds, Barclays shares jump as FCA softens blow October 8, 2025 Shares in motor finance lenders rallied on Wednesday morning after the Financial Conduct Authority dropped a major update on its industry-wide redress scheme. Lloyds Banking Group – which owns the UK’s largest motor finance provider, Black Horse – was up over two per cent to 85.06p. Meanwhile, Close Brothers, which just last week set aside [...]
Hargreaves Lansdown co-founder to step down from board October 8, 2025 The billionaire co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown is stepping down as board director of the personal investment business months after its £5.4bn acquisition by private equity firms, marking an end to his involvement in the business. Peter Hargreaves, who created the UK’s largest DIY investment site with co-founder Stephen Lansdown in 1981, will be handing his [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Bank shares surge; Gold surpasses $4,000 October 8, 2025 Good morning from the City PM live blog team. Arguably no sector has had as sensitive share movement in recent months as the banking industry. In August, following the motor finance ruling, City banks added £7bn in market value after a major boost from the Supreme Court. But less than a month later after the [...]
Reeves urged to increase alcohol taxes to tackle workplace drinking October 8, 2025 Pubs and restaurants up and down the country could be forced to serve up higher booze prices as Rachel Reeves has been urged to add fresh alcohol levies to her menu of tax rises at next month’s Budget. The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank with close ties to the government, has [...]
Reeves must reject this finger-wagging, fun-sapping, tax-loving nonsense October 8, 2025 The Chancellor may have felt in need of a stiff drink after absorbing the latest productivity figures handed to her by the Office for Budget Responsibility, and who could blame her? The OBR is widely expected to have significantly downgraded its productivity forecasts while at the same time conceding that it’s been overestimating productivity growth [...]
Average Brit would need lifetime of earnings to become wealthy October 8, 2025 The average British worker would need to save more than a lifetime’s worth of earnings to become wealthy, fresh analysis has revealed. The ever-widening wealth gap means it would take £1.3m – around 52 years’ worth of average earnings – to jump from the middle to the top of wealth distribution. This is over a [...]
Badenoch preferred as Prime Minister over Starmer October 8, 2025 Kemi Badenoch has been handed a boost ahead of her make-or-break Tory conference speech today as fresh polling has shown the Tory leader is preferred as Prime Minister over Keir Starmer. The latest City PM/Freshwater Strategy survey has shown that Badenoch leads Starmer by two percentage points as the country’s preferred Prime Minister, a marginal [...]
FCA orders lenders to pay £11bn in motor finance compensation October 7, 2025 The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that it expects lenders to make 14.2 million payouts to individuals affected by unfair motor finance agreements, totalling around £11bn in compensation. The FCA estimates people would receive around £700 per agreement, on average. It has also been calculated that around 85 per cent of eligible consumers would [...]
London maintains its commanding lead as largest foreign exchange centre October 7, 2025 London has maintained its commanding lead as the world’s largest foreign exchange centre, holding nearly double the US’s share. According to the latest data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), daily foreign exchange trading in London reached $4,745bn this year, with its global market share of 38.7 per cent nearly twice that of the [...]
Mel Stride: I would raise income tax in Rachel Reeves’ position October 7, 2025 Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has said he would raise income taxes if he were in Rachel Reeves’ position, facing a £30bn black hole in the public finances. Speaking at a fringe event at the Tory party conference in Manchester, Stride said raising income taxes was the “cleanest” tax hike option available. His comments will likely [...]
