Written By Unknown on Kamis, 01 Januari 2015 | 11.46
UK house price growth eased to its weakest annual pace for 13 months in December, according to Nationwide.
The building society's monthly index showed that property prices lifted by 7.2% annually this month to reach £188,559 on average, slowing from an 8.5% annual rate of growth in November.
The average cost of a home edged slightly lower from the record high of £189,388 measured the previous month.
Nationwide's report named London as the UK's "top performer" for price growth in 2014, with prices there up by 17.8% year on year, reaching £406,730 typically.
Wales was the weakest-performing region, with values having increased by 1.4% annually to reach £141,631 on average.
Activity in the housing market slowed following the introduction of tougher mortgage affordability checks but Nationwide forecast a return to stronger growth in 2015 because of stamp duty reforms and improved levels of construction.
Its chief economist Robert Gardner said: "The slowdown in housing market activity is surprising given further steady gains in employment, a pickup in wage growth (albeit from low levels) and the continued low level of mortgage rates.
"Moreover, surveys suggest consumers remain in high spirits – a view reinforced by robust retail spending growth in November, which was at its highest for over a decade.
"If the economic backdrop continues to improve as we and most forecasters expect, activity in the housing market is likely to regain momentum in the months ahead.
"Supply side developments will be crucial in determining the trajectory for prices."
The administrators of courier firm City Link have announced 2,356 job losses after a bid to buy the company failed.
Many workers found out about the firm's collapse on Christmas Day and had been warned to expect "substantial redundancies".
Announcing the job losses on New Year's Eve, the administrators at EY said an offer that was made for City Link had not been acceptable.
The bid, made by a consortium, "offered no money up front and significantly undervalued the assets to be acquired", the administrators said.
They said: "The administrators proposed an alternative structure that would be acceptable and common in these situations.
Video:Dec 29: Workers Protest At Depots
"The consortium, despite attempts to make them reconsider, declined to amend their original offer."
Coventry, where the firm has its head office, faces the highest number of redundancies, with 350 jobs lost.
There have also been more than 100 job losses in Hatfield, Heathrow and Warrington.
The administrators said 371 people have been retained to deal with remaining parcels and to help with winding down its operations.
Hunter Kelly, joint administrator of City Link Limited, said: "The company endured substantial losses, which ultimately became too great for it to continue as a going concern, and City Link Limited entered administration following an unsuccessful sale process."
RMT union general secretary Mick Cash said: "The confirmation from the administrators that they have just sacked 2,400 staff and are pulling the plug on any efforts to save City Link is a disgraceful and cynical betrayal that will wreck the lives of our members, many of whom are owed thousands of pounds.
"RMT does not believe that those pulling the strings had any interest in saving this business and were happy to cut and run leaving a trail of human misery in their wake.
"The City Link collapse has blown the lid off the cosy relationship between bandit capitalism and the political elite."
Business Secretary Vince Cable said: "This is very sad news for the City Link workers and their families at a particularly difficult time of year.
"The Government has put arrangements in place to help employees who are made redundant and we stand ready to help."
Around 30,000 parcels are waiting to be collected from City Link depots.
Administrators say they expect depots to remain open until "approximately" 6 January.
Written By Unknown on Selasa, 30 Desember 2014 | 11.46
If, as now looks quite possible, far-left party Syriza wins next month's snap elections, plunging Greece back into chaos, there will be more than a smidgeon of irony about the whole affair.
For one thing, the elections mark almost exactly five years since the Greek economic crisis first exploded onto the world stage.
In late January 2010 the then-prime minister George Papandreou stood up on the main plenary stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos and declared that his country was under attack by speculators. The country sought a bailout three months later.
But, more significantly, 2015 was supposed to be the year of the Greek recovery.
Yes, the country is still regrouping following the deepest post-war recession of any developed country. More than a quarter of the eligible working age population are still out of work - and around half of all those under the age of 25.
The number of years a Greek citizen can hope to live in a healthy state has fallen from 67.4 in 2007 to 64.9 in 2012.
And yet Greece seemed to have turned the corner. Unemployment was starting, very gradually, to fall. The Government's austerity plans were coming to an end. The country had attained a primary surplus, meaning that when debt interest was ignored it was finally earning enough tax revenues to finance its spending.
And, to cap it off, the International Monetary Fund expected it to be the fastest-growing economy in the eurozone next year (after Ireland).
So the return of the jitters around Greece could hardly have come at a less opportune moment. But does this episode mean a full-blown euro crisis is in prospect? Well, yes and no.
On the one hand, remember that the euro crisis was as much a political one as an economic one. All it takes is for a country to elect a government which is steadfastly against either the euro or the terms of its bailout and it could cause major disruption in the single currency area.
That's what could happen if Syriza wins the election. It could well happen in Spain if Podemos, the fast-growing new anti-bailout party wins the country's elections at the end of the year.
Moreover, the real problem in the single currency - that there is a massive gulf in performance between its member states and few, if any, mechanisms to adjust for that - still hasn't been addressed.
Although there is now the skeleton of a banking union taking shape, there are no plans for a proper fiscal union (so that taxes from, for instance, Germany, could help support the Greek economy). Until one is created, the likelihood is that Europe will continue to limp from crisis to crisis.
However, even if Greece were to start threatening to renege on its bailout commitments or leave the currency, a widespread crisis beyond Greece's borders may not be a foregone conclusion.
Stock markets across Europe have been relatively sanguine about what's happening in Athens. Bond yields on other leading European economies remain low.
In other words, markets are betting that a Greek crisis could be contained. That won't prevent some nervous moments in the coming months as the country prepares for the polls again.
Greece has been plunged back into crisis mode by a snap parliamentary election that could yield a government opposed to the country's financial reforms.
The Athens Stock Exchange was 10% down when it was confirmed that the government of prime minister Antonis Samaras had failed to secure the election of a new president, triggering the national poll.
The radical leftist Syriza party, which wants to renegotiate Greece's bailout agreements that have prevented Greece defaulting on its debts and roll back on austerity, is favourite to win the general election.
The prospect of a new government reneging on the terms of the rescue deals - agreed with the EU and International Monetary Fund - prompted the stock market sell-off.
Investors are worried the country's very future in the euro is a core risk as polls suggest most voters favour a return to the drachma following five years of crippling cuts and job losses.
Video:Snap Elections For Greece
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said the snap election would herald an end to austerity.
He said: "With the will of our people, in a few days the bailout agreements of austerity will be history."
In a televised address Mr Samaras said: "Tomorrow I will visit the president and request that elections be held as soon as possible, on 25 January."
He had previously warned that an election could be "disastrous" while the country is negotiating with its creditors.
Greek banks bore the brunt of the hit to the Athens market, with Bank of Piraeus dropping 16.7% to record lows while National Bank of Greece fell 14.2%.
The Greek result hit stock markets in Spain and Italy particularly badly too as they were also badly damaged by the Eurozone economic slump and sovereign debt crisis which led to Greece's 2010 bailout.
The country had been progressing well in its recovery though cuts to core services remain deeply unpopular and unemployment is stubbornly above 25%.
Written By Unknown on Senin, 29 Desember 2014 | 11.46
By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
Rival delivery companies including Royal Mail were approached about a pre-Christmas rescue of City Link, the parcel services provider which collapsed into administration this week.
Sky News has learnt that Royal Mail and DX Group held preliminary talks in recent weeks with KPMG, which was working for City Link's owner to identify possible buyers of the struggling company.
Royal Mail, which is 30%-owned by the taxpayer, is understood to have been interested in taking on some of City Link's large customer contracts, which include deliveries for high street retailers such as John Lewis and Mothercare.
DX is said by insiders to have held talks about a more comprehensive deal involving City Link's assets, and analysts said they now expected it to attempt to acquire parts of the company out of administration.
Other specialist restructuring firms were also approached about a takeover of City Link, but none of these resulted in concrete discussions about a deal prior to directors appointing EY as administrator after the close of trading on Christmas Eve.
Video:'I Received The Email On Christmas'
The collapse has sparked controversy, with more than 2,700 jobs directly under threat and a further 1,000 said to be at risk owing to the number of self-employed contractors used by City Link.
The RMT trade union criticised Better Capital, the investment firm which owns City Link, for the timing of the administration, which Sky News revealed on Christmas Day.
But sources close to the situation pointed to an email sent by one RMT official to members on Christmas Eve which said - inaccurately - that the company had already called in administrators that morning.
"This led to increasing pressure on the business and given the level of rumour [there was a] risk of creditor action and thus the company [had to be placed] into administration to give it protection," said an insider.
RMT officials held talks with the administrators on Saturday about a possible rescue, while Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has agreed to meet the union to discuss the situation in the new year.
A spokesperson for the RMT union said: "A meeting between City Link union RMT and administrators Ernst and Young today has exposed a truly horrific catalogue of mismanagement at the top of the company dating back to November which leaves more than 2,000 staff facing redundancy on new years eve with a skeleton staff kept on for a couple of weeks to wind down the operation."
City Link was acquired by Better Capital, an investment firm headed by Jon Moulton, a leading financier, last year.
Its previous owner, the pest control firm Rentokil, offloaded it for just £1, reflecting the parcel group's long history of losses.
People close to the situation said Better Capital's £40m investment in City Link had been followed by a series of efforts to make it commercially viable, and pointed out that the current shareholder would lose a "significant" sum of money as a result of its collapse.
Video:Xmas Misery For Delivery Workers
The scale of possible job losses among City Link's 2,727 employees has not yet been identified, although EY said they were likely to be substantial, with the first round of redundancies expected within days.
A number of staff are being retained to help return parcels to customers and assist with winding down City Link's operations, the administrator said.
Despite the recent explosion in the growth of online shopping, the delivery sector is beset by excess capacity, with companies such as Amazon developing their own delivery services.
Last month, Better Capital wrote down the value of its £40m investment in City Link by 50% and said it was exploring "various options to maximise the value of the (holding)".
In the wake of a £14m loss for the 2013-14 financial year, City Link's owner added that the business had "progressively deviated from its monthly profit budget during its current year to 31 December driving the conclusion that its current structure is unsustainable in the long term".
Better Capital blamed the worsening outlook on "excess (and increasing) capacity in the sector, made worse by customers developing their own delivery capabilities".
The administrators said customers who had handed over parcels to City Link on Christmas Eve should go to a depot to retrieve them on or after December 29.
The company's online parcel tracking system and helpline telephone numbers are again open to enable fulfilment of existing orders.
Royal Mail declined to comment while DX was unavailable.
Andrew Wright gets up at 5.30am every day to milk his herd of 170 cows.
He took over the farm in Cheshire from his parents twenty five years ago and had hoped to one day pass it on to his son.
But times are tough for dairy farmers. Milk prices are falling and for every pint produced there is no guarantee of a profit. Indeed, many farmers are already making a loss.
Unable to balance the books, 16 dairy farmers are giving up on milk production every week in England and Wales, according to the Tenant Farmers Association.
It's a prospect Mr Wright is now having to face.
"If prices keep dropping as they are, in another 12 to 18 months' time we will have to consider how the business carries on, or in what form the business carries on," he says.
"I have a son who's 12. He's shown an interest in the farm. I don't want to discourage that in any way but he'll have to make his own mind up and if he sees that there isn't the return there for his dad, he is probably going to look elsewhere for employment in the future."
In April, farmers could get up to 35p per litre, but that's dropped to around 28p. That's less than the cost of producing milk, which is around 30p per litre.
Farmers say supermarket price wars are partly to blame for devaluing milk.
Some retailers sell milk at a loss and most have cut the cost of a four pint bottle over the last year. In some supermarkets it's now sold for as little as 89p.
But supermarkets argue it's their profits that take a hit when they cut the price to customers.
Andrew Opie from the British Retail Consortium said: "The fact a supermarket might sell four pints for a pound doesn't impact on the farmer. They'll be getting a guaranteed price through the dairy that they've agreed with the supermarket.
"So if a supermarket wants to invest in its own milk to sell it more affordable for consumers, that's great for consumers."
But a number of processors who buy from farms to sell to retailers have been cutting the price they pay to farmers, and further cuts will come in 2015.
Mr Wright says farmers wonder who is making a profit.
"It's always the farmer at the bottom of the chain that gets told how much he's getting for his milk," he says.
"Maybe the processors should be opening their books if they've got nothing to hide."
He fears that eventually savings may need to be made on feed and vaccinations but that is not a path he wants to go down unless he has to.
Written By Unknown on Minggu, 28 Desember 2014 | 11.46
By Ed Conway, Economics Editor
What you search for on Google and post on Facebook could soon influence what happens to interest rates.
The Bank of England has set up a special taskforce to monitor the internet and social networks for early signs of Britain's economic ups and downs.
The special team, set up by the Bank's chief economist, Andy Haldane, has been charged with exploring how new unconventional sources of data could improve its picture of Britain's recovery.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Haldane said that the Bank had started to explore using unconventional data, including data gleaned from analysing internet activity, after it found that it could be more timely than the official data.
For instance, analysis of the frequency of internet job searches, or of prices online, can give one an insight into the prospects for unemployment and inflation.
Video:The Bank Of England Is 'Evolving'
"Official statistics tend to be lagging and tend to be revised. And what this scraping of the web can do is give us a better today read on what's going on," he said.
He added that these and other "informal sources" of data "have been somewhat more reliable in picking up the uptick in the fortunes of the economy".
Mr Haldane told Sky News that the Bank was already using new data sources, including a massive "big data" database on mortgages, which helped them decide to impose their new constraints on the housing market earlier this year.
"Some of those interventions were calibrated by analysing this big database on mortgage borrowing by pretty much everyone in the UK," he said.
"We have a new advanced analytics team who are constructing little models, algorithms and methods for extracting this data. We have a data lab. This is quite a big strategic change for the bank.
"This is going to be quite a big shift from the past."
Rival delivery companies including Royal Mail were approached about a pre-Christmas rescue of City Link, the parcel services provider which collapsed into administration this week.
Sky News has learnt that Royal Mail and DX Group held preliminary talks in recent weeks with KPMG, which was working for City Link's owner to identify possible buyers of the struggling company.
Royal Mail, which is 30%-owned by the taxpayer, is understood to have been interested in taking on some of City Link's large customer contracts, which include deliveries for high street retailers such as John Lewis and Mothercare.
DX is said by insiders to have held talks about a more comprehensive deal involving City Link's assets, and analysts said they now expected it to attempt to acquire parts of the company out of administration.
Other specialist restructuring firms were also approached about a takeover of City Link, but none of these resulted in concrete discussions about a deal prior to directors appointing EY as administrator after the close of trading on Christmas Eve.
Video:'I Received The Email On Christmas'
The collapse has sparked controversy, with more than 2,700 jobs directly under threat and a further 1,000 said to be at risk owing to the number of self-employed contractors used by City Link.
The RMT trade union criticised Better Capital, the investment firm which owns City Link, for the timing of the administration, which Sky News revealed on Christmas Day.
But sources close to the situation pointed to an email sent by one RMT official to members on Christmas Eve which said - inaccurately - that the company had already called in administrators that morning.
"This led to increasing pressure on the business and given the level of rumour [there was a] risk of creditor action and thus the company [had to be placed] into administration to give it protection," said an insider.
RMT officials held talks with the administrators on Saturday about a possible rescue, while Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has agreed to meet the union to discuss the situation in the new year.
A spokesperson for the RMT union said: "A meeting between City Link union RMT and administrators Ernst and Young today has exposed a truly horrific catalogue of mismanagement at the top of the company dating back to November which leaves more than 2,000 staff facing redundancy on new years eve with a skeleton staff kept on for a couple of weeks to wind down the operation."
City Link was acquired by Better Capital, an investment firm headed by Jon Moulton, a leading financier, last year.
Its previous owner, the pest control firm Rentokil, offloaded it for just £1, reflecting the parcel group's long history of losses.
People close to the situation said Better Capital's £40m investment in City Link had been followed by a series of efforts to make it commercially viable, and pointed out that the current shareholder would lose a "significant" sum of money as a result of its collapse.
Video:Xmas Misery For Delivery Workers
The scale of possible job losses among City Link's 2,727 employees has not yet been identified, although EY said they were likely to be substantial, with the first round of redundancies expected within days.
A number of staff are being retained to help return parcels to customers and assist with winding down City Link's operations, the administrator said.
Despite the recent explosion in the growth of online shopping, the delivery sector is beset by excess capacity, with companies such as Amazon developing their own delivery services.
Last month, Better Capital wrote down the value of its £40m investment in City Link by 50% and said it was exploring "various options to maximise the value of the (holding)".
In the wake of a £14m loss for the 2013-14 financial year, City Link's owner added that the business had "progressively deviated from its monthly profit budget during its current year to 31 December driving the conclusion that its current structure is unsustainable in the long term".
Better Capital blamed the worsening outlook on "excess (and increasing) capacity in the sector, made worse by customers developing their own delivery capabilities".
The administrators said customers who had handed over parcels to City Link on Christmas Eve should go to a depot to retrieve them on or after December 29.
The company's online parcel tracking system and helpline telephone numbers are again open to enable fulfilment of existing orders.
Royal Mail declined to comment while DX was unavailable.
