Author: LoveWorld UK

British house prices jumped the highest in 11 years this month, adding to signs that parts of the economy are rebounding rapidly as coronavirus restrictions are eased. Mortgage lender Nationwide said average house prices leapt by 1.7% in July, above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists and the biggest monthly increase since August 2009, when the market was recovering from the financial crisis. “The bounce back in prices reflects the unexpectedly rapid recovery in housing market activity since the easing of lockdown restrictions,” Nationwide chief economist Robert Gardner said. The Bank of England reported that mortgage approvals -…

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Newcastle United fans say they have been treated with contempt after a 300 million-pound takeover bid from a Saudi-backed consortium collapsed on Thursday. The group, which included Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, PCP Capital Partners and Reuben Brothers, announced they were ending their interest in the deal which had been delayed by the Premier League’s owners and directors test. The end of the Saudi bid left the North East club still in the hands of British businessman Mike Ashley, who has long faced protests and opposition from the fans. Many Newcastle fans had welcomed the…

President Donald Trump on Thursday raised the idea of delaying the Nov. 3 U.S. elections, an idea immediately rejected by both Democrats and his fellow Republicans in Congress – the sole branch of government with the authority to make such a change. Critics and even Trump’s allies dismissed the notion as an unserious attempt to distract from devastating economic news, but some legal experts warned that his repeated attacks could undermine his supporters’ faith in the election process. Trump’s statement on Twitter comes as the United States is enduring a multi-pronged, once-in-a-generation crisis: a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more…

Facebook Inc has completed a series of deals for the right to show music videos on its platform, raising the prospect of its competing more with Alphabet Co’s video platform YouTube in the area, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The social media giant is expected to announce partnerships with three of music world’s biggest labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, the report said (here), citing people familiar with the matter. Universal as a group is home to Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, among others, while Sony’s big names include Beyonce, Mariah Carey and Alicia Keyes.…

The introduction of mandatory face masks in most enclosed spaces across Britain was designed to protect people during the pandemic but has made life very difficult for the deaf community. Face coverings prevent lip reading and hide facial expressions, making it virtually impossible for the 12 million people who are either deaf or suffering with hearing loss in Britain to communicate and forcing many to stay at home. Mangai Sutharsan, director of Empowering Deaf Society, said she understood why masks were important to help counter the spread of COVID-19 but the introduction had increased her anxiety about going into public…

Roughly one in three furloughed workers in Britain returned to their jobs during the first two weeks of July as the hospitality industry reopened to the public, an official survey suggested on Thursday. Some 7% of workers at businesses surveyed by the Office for National Statistics between June 29 and July 12 had returned to work within the previous two weeks, reducing the proportion who remained on furlough to 17%. The sector with the largest number of workers returning was accommodation and food services businesses – which reopened to guests on July 4 – where 18% returned to work, though…

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) swung to a rare pretax loss in the first half of 2020, after setting aside a bigger than expected 2.4 billion pounds second-quarter provision to cover a potential hike in bad loans due to the coronavirus. The hefty provision, which was 60% higher than an average of analyst estimates, came as it drastically revised its models for the worst-case scenario for Britain’s economy as it grapples with the fallout from the pandemic. The United Kingdom’s biggest domestic bank, seen as a bellwether for the wider economy, said it had adopted a gloomier outlook and estimated the…

Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) said on Thursday that it was wrapping its global markets and investment banking divisions into a single unit, as Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein puts his first major strategic stamp on the bank. Switzerland’s second-biggest bank also posted a 24% rise in second-quarter net profit to 1.162 billion Swiss francs (981.39 million pounds), blowing past the mean estimate for 700 million Swiss francs in the bank’s own poll of 17 analysts. “We are today announcing a series of strategic initiatives to improve effectiveness and to generate efficiencies,” Gottstein, who became CEO in February, said in a statement, as…

Sterling rose against a weaker euro but fell versus the dollar on Thursday after the $1.30 level reached late in the previous session did not hold, with Brexit and the economic fallout from coronavirus weighing on the currency. Global market sentiment was boosted late on Wednesday after the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said the bank would “do what we can, and for as long as it takes” to limit the coronavirus damage to the United States’ economy, but optimism was tempered by record-high COVID-19 infections. The dollar fell while Powell was speaking, with the pound reaching…

Google and Facebook took particularly sharp jabs for alleged abuse of their market power from Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday in a much-anticipated congressional hearing here that put four of America’s most prominent tech CEOs in the hot seat. The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives antitrust panel holding the hearing said afterwards that the four CEOs had acknowledged concerning behavior. “What we heard from witnesses at the hearing confirmed the evidence that we have collected over the last year,” Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat, told Reuters. Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Jeff Bezos, Google owner Alphabet Inc’s…