British homebuilders are building fewer homes, cutting down on land purchases and offering more incentives as high mortgage rates and the lack of any immediate support from the government make homes less affordable for first-time buyers, Reuters reported. Top UK residential builder Barratt said this month it would build around 20% fewer homes in its fiscal year 2024, while high-end builder Berkeley expects annual sales to fall by a fifth. Midcap firms Bellway and Crest Nicholson have also pointed to high mortgage rates hampering demand from first-time buyers. And that's not all.
Read more
UK job vacancies rose for a fifth month, boosting salaries and signaling tightness in the labor market that’s likely to fan inflation, data from the search engine Adzuna showed, Reuters reported. The jobs search site listed 1.06 million vacancies across the UK in June, up 0.78% from the month before but 12% lower than a year ago. It said advertised salaries rose 3.6% from a year ago to £37,807, and the number of days to fill open positions fell to a record low.
Read more
A millionaire 'magic circle' lawyer who sailed the seas on a £17 million superyacht is facing bankruptcy after failing to hand a £19 million investment fund back to a Saudi princess, the Daily Mail reported. Former lawyer Ronald Gibbs has been locked in a court fight with the Saudi Royal Family after he agreed to set up and manage the multi-million-pound investment fund for Princess Deema Bint Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2011.
Consumer prices in Britain rose 7.9 percent in June from a year ago, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, the slowest pace of inflation in more than a year, the New York Times reported. The slowdown, which was greater than economists had expected, will bring some relief to the government following months of inflation repeatedly turning out higher than forecast. The annual rate of price growth slowed from 8.7 percent in May. The decline was driven by a large drop in the price of motor fuels. Food prices rose 17.3 percent in June from the year before.
Public services are in crisis. The NHS is on its knees. The water industry – which is now largely privatised – has failed to invest in infrastructure, and as a result sewage pollution is damaging the environment at an unprecedented rate, the New Statesman reported. Thousands of pupils have been taken out of outdated and unsafe school buildings and are being educated remotely or in temporary classrooms.
The gleaming skyscrapers of London’s east skyline, built almost 40 years ago, are home to the headquarters of the world’s biggest banks and tens of thousands of their office workers. But when the workweek starts these days, the towers in Canary Wharf are quieter and the nearby restaurants are emptier — the result of a shift to remote work during the pandemic that sent office markets around the world plunging and vacancy rates rising, the New York Times reported. As firms adjust to hybrid work, many are downsizing their physical footprint.
Cineworld Group said on Thursday that Eduardo Acuna, who runs the Americas operations of Mexican theatre operator Cinepolis, will become its CEO when the company emerges from bankruptcy proceedings, expected this month, Reuters reported. The group, which filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in September, said lenders had agreed to appoint Acuna as CEO of the newly formed parent company after its restructuring plan becomes effective. Shares in London-listed Cineworld were trading up 11% at 0.4 pence by 1145 GMT, but remain more than 99% below their all-time high of 310.7 pence hit in 2017.
Read more
Britain’s public finances are on an unsustainable path and rapidly deteriorating, the Treasury’s fiscal watchdog said in a report that highlighted multi-billion-pound demands for spending on defense, climate and health, Bloomberg News reported. The Office for Budget Responsibility said in its fiscal risks report that UK public debt will soar to more than 300% of gross domestic product by 2072-73, a scenario deemed “optimistic” given the threat of future shocks.
Read more
Non-league Southend United have been given more time to clear a £275,000 tax debt, YahooFinance.com reported. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has issued a winding-up petition. A judge in a specialist court was told on Wednesday that a sale of the club was in progress. Judge Sally Barber, who oversaw a hearing in the Insolvency and Companies Court hearing at the Rolls Building in central London, said the case would be reconsidered in six weeks. She was told by Southend chairman Ron Martin that more time was needed to complete the sale of the club and clear the debt.
Read more
Britain's economy is so far proving resilient to a surge in interest rates over the past year and a half, but it will take time for the full impact to feed through, the Bank of England said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The Bank last month raised rates to 5%, up from 0.1% at the end of 2021, raising concerns about a hit to households, businesses and the broader financial sector that could push the economy into a recession. But in a half-yearly assessment of the health of the financial system, the BoE said there was no reason for alarm.
Read more