Howard Davies criticised as being ‘out of touch’ with number of first-time buyers at lowest level in a decade The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” …
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HSBC joins mortgage rate-cutting drive with deals below 4%
Five- and 10-year fixed-rate remortgage offers announced as lenders big and small reduce rates HSBC has become the latest big UK lender to announce across-the-board mortgage interest rate cuts, with …
Read More »A Farage farrago, crypto crime and rivers of cash: the 2023 Observer business awards
Bank boss Alison Rose, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, Sarah Bentley of Thames Water and OpenAI’s Sam Altman feature highly on this year’s prestigious honours list Sometimes business leaders want more than …
Read More »Smiles all round as financial markets end 2023 on an unexpected high
Equities worldwide have had a good year, the pound looks healthy and gold is positively gleaming. Shame about the lacklustre state of most UK shares Global financial markets confounded gloomy …
Read More »Aviva boss Amanda Blanc and retail guru Mary Portas among business figures in new year honours list
Insurance CEO cited for services to gender equality, while Stephen Hester and Gerald Ronson are also honoured Cronyism claims as at least seven Tory donors included in honours list About …
Read More »Treasury to end oversight of £425m scheme to help banks after RBS bailout
Body monitoring use of money given to challenger banks to promote competition to be wound down despite objectives not met Lenders that received payouts from a £425m pot of public …
Read More »And the winners of the 2023 awards for worst customer service are …
We celebrate the companies that went the extra mile … to inflate their balance sheets and let down loyal customers These are troubling times for big business. Traders, fighting for …
Read More »UK students launch Barclays ‘career boycott’ over bank’s climate policies
Campaign at leading universities such as Oxbridge and UCL warns lender it will miss out on top talent if it finances fossil fuels Hundreds of students from leading UK universities …
Read More »Ex-NatWest chief’s name axed from ‘Rose review’ into female-led firms
Exclusive: government to rebrand scheme amid fallout from Farage scandal that cost Alison Rose her job A state-backed review into female entrepreneurship is to be rebranded by the government as …
Read More »UK mortgages: trial to rule on deals that left people with huge debts
Decades after shared appreciation mortgage launch, case brought by law firm due to reach high court It was one of a list of “millennium products” lauded by the then prime …
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