Author: LoveWorld UK

Investors in property funds should wait up to six months before they can get their money back to avoid a stampede for the exit leading to widespread suspensions in rocky markets, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority proposed on Monday. UK-regulated open-ended property funds offer daily redemptions to entice investors, but nearly all those targeted by Monday’s proposal are suspended following market volatility in March due to the pandemic, trapping more than $7.5 billion (5.7 billion pounds) in assets. Policymakers have warned that property funds should not be viewed like a bank account that can be tapped at will, given they contain…

Nearly five months after the sport was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, Donna Vekic became the first player to win a main draw match in the COVID-19 era, beating Arantxa Rus 6-1 6-2 in the first round of the Palermo Ladies Open on Monday. The claycourt event in Sicily marked the return of the WTA Tour which last held a tournament in March as the sport looks to limp back to a semblance of normality, albeit with strict guidelines in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Vekic’s victory was achieved in 75 minutes but just a…

Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud unit is poised for a surge in fourth-quarter sales from U.S. retailers, as they brace for record online shopping during the holidays because of COVID-19 lockdowns. Cloud technology, used to host websites and store data, is a key part of many retailers’ e-commerce operations. As fees are often pegged to site traffic, a jump in activity will drive up revenue for the unit. Carrie Tharp, vice president of retail and consumer at Google Cloud, told Reuters that her team had this year tossed out its linear growth model to predict how many servers it will need…

BP (BP.L) cut its dividend for the first time in a decade after a record $6.7 billion second quarter loss when the coronavirus crisis hammered fuel demand and it sought to win over investors by speeding up its reinvention as a lower carbon company. Its shares rose 6% in early trading on Tuesday. All major oil companies suffered in the second quarter as lockdowns to contain the new coronavirus limited travel and oil prices LCOc1 fell to their lowest in two decades. Several, including Royal Dutch Shell and Norway’s Equinor, cut their dividend in response. Looney, who took the helm…

Banks’ lending to businesses under a government-backed COVID-19 loan scheme has exceeded 50 billion pounds ($65 billion), while the cost of supporting furloughed workers has increased to 33.8 billion pounds, weekly finance ministry figures showed. Lending across the government’s three main programmes for small, medium and large businesses rose to a total 50.69 billion pounds as of Aug. 2, up from 49.43 billion pounds the week before. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which has supported 9.6 million jobs and is the costliest single government COVID relief measure, has risen to 33.8 billion pounds from 31.7 billion pounds a week earlier.

HSBC Holdings PLC warned its bad debt charges could blow past a previous estimate to $13 billion this year and said its profits more than halved, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the bank’s retail and corporate customers worldwide. The lender warned its capital reserves could deteriorate, its revenues would come under pressure and it faced heightened geopolitical risk as Europe’s biggest bank set out a gloomier than expected outlook for the second half of the year. HSBC increased its estimate of the total bad debt charges it could take this year to between $8 billion and $13 billion from $7…

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard says starting the new Premier League season on Sept. 12 is too early and his players run the risk of sustaining injuries given the short turnaround between campaigns. Chelsea trail Bayern Munich 3-0 heading into the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Saturday and even if they fail to overcome the deficit Lampard’s side will have little over a month to recover before the new season begins. “I am guessing we will be told when we start and that will be dependent on how we go against Bayern,” Lampard told British media on…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in investment among Britons, with millennials leading the way as they turn increasingly to the stock market. The crisis pushed UK household consumption down by a record 9.5 billion pounds in the first quarter as spending on restaurants, clothes and cars plummeted, official data shows. That drop in spending has led to a pick-up in equities investment by people frustrated at low savings rates, particularly among so-called millennials born after 1981, Investment platform Interactive Investor said that openings of tax-efficient self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and ISA investment accounts by 25 to 34…

British manufacturing output grew at its fastest pace in nearly three years in July as factories reopened and demand began to pick up after the coronavirus lockdown was eased, a closely watched business survey showed on Monday. The IHS Markit/CIPS manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 53.3 in July from June’s 50.1, broadly in line with an earlier flash estimate of 53.6 and the highest since March 2019. The PMI’s output component – which survey compilers IHS Markit say currently gives a clearer sense of the sector’s health – rose to its highest since November 2017 at 59.3. Orders…

Microsoft Corp said it will push ahead with talks to acquire the U.S. operations of Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok, a potential blockbuster deal that could re-shape the social media industry and further inflame crumbling U.S.-China relations. The U.S. tech giant formally declared its interest on Sunday after President Donald Trump reversed course on a planned ban of Tiktok and gave the two firms to 45 days to come to a deal. The proposed acquisition of parts of TikTok, which boasts 100 million U.S. users, would offer Microsoft a rare opportunity to become a major competitor to social media giants such…