Finance

The job drain in the financial sector is likely to start before Brexit negotiations conclude because banks are planning for a worst-case scenario. Britain's finance industry could lose up to 40,000 investment banking jobs in the next few years unless it strikes a softer deal on its departure from the European Union. But many jobs could be lost before any deal is struck. According to a new report by consultancy firm Oliver Wyman banks are currently planning for a worst-case...

"Shrinkflation" is dwindling UK consumer products, with 2,529 products reducing in size over the past five years. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) coined the term to describe products that shrink in size but are being sold for the same price. Chocolate bars,  toilet rolls, coffee and fruit juice are all among the 2,529 products now being sold in smaller packet sizes, with 614 products getting larger between 2012 and 2017. The ONS said the phenomenon of shrinkflation had not had an impact...

Millions of workers set to work longer as Government bring forward state pension age increase. The GMB Union has attacked a Government announcement that a rise in the pension age to 68 has been brought forward. Ministers confirmed it will be phased in between 2037 and 2039, rather than by 2046 as was originally proposed. Six million men and women aged between 39 and 47 will have to wait a year longer to get their state pension as a result of...

Following the Brexit vote the joke doing the rounds was that the Bank of England would commemorate the new £10 note by plunging its value to £8.60, but its purchasing power could be far worse than that based on historical analysis. The new £10 note was launched today featuring Jane Austen on the 200th anniversary of her death in 1817. And according to new analysis inflation has shrunk the purchasing power of the note by nearly 99 per cent since that date. Today, the 10 pound note...

GMB, Unison and Unite have submitted a police staff pay claim to break the government imposed pay cap. Police staff, along with other public sector workers, have had thousands of pounds pinched from their wages due to a government imposed 1% pay cap which forces them to foot the bill for the 2008 crash. GMB analysis shows that most police staff salaries have lost between 9.4 per cent (CPI) and 13.5 per cent (RPI) of their value since 2010. The...

The GMB Union responded to the 'disappointing' Taylor Review as the report was published today. While the union welcomed recommendations such as scrapping the long despised Swedish Derogation and the acceptance that the Gig Economy isn't working for workers, it challenged the Government to grasp the nettle and tackle the whole of the precarious economy. Matthew Taylor, who was commissioned last year by the Prime Minister to carry out this review, will today publish his 7 principles to achieve “good...

Debt remains the #1 bugbear for families across the United Kingdom. For many people, debt appears to be an insurmountable problem, growing on a daily basis thanks to the interest-related payments on outstanding debt, rising inflation, and shrinking real-money wages. The UK economy is now beset with a series of challenges that require an urgent response from the Bank of England in the form of monetary tightening to prevent inflationary pressures. The latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decision from June...

In my younger more primitive years I used to think of credit reporting as nothing more than a way of consumerising a business function. Credit reports, or scores as they're now known to the public, are used by creditors as a way of making decisions about your creditworthiness,  but it is of little practical use outside high street banks and car dealerships. More widespread knowledge of prudent credit usage is a more suited antidote to better credit over a colourful barometer shipped...

The Conservative Party assumes that people want lower taxes and the rolling back of the public sector, and under Thatcher that approach worked and kept the party in power for a long period of time. However, it appears that the British people are increasingly in favour of the opposite and welcome an increase in taxes and Govt spending, according to a new study. The research found that almost half of people in the British Isles want the Government to raise...