Tom Hill joined Express.co.uk in October as City and Finance Reporter. He covers all things money and business from the latest company news to cryptocurrency market movements. Previously he worked for the BBC and Share Radio.
Amid the twin pressures of Covid lockdowns in China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany industrial output has fallen far beyond expectation. According to statistics body Destatis, industrial production fell by 3.9 percent in March, almost four times the predicted one percent decline. Germany’s famous car industry has been particularly badly hit seeing a 14 percent drop in production […]
Thursday’s hike to one percent marked the fourth consecutive hike in a row by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) however a big question now is whether this unbroken run will continue. Notably three of the MPC’s nine members, Jonathan Haskel, Michael Saunders and Catherine Mann, voted for a much sharper increase of 50 basis […]
“These sanctions will further chip away at Putin’s financial reserves and siege economy, and support Ukraine’s continued resistance.” Once valued at more than £5billion and a member of the FTSE 100, Evraz saw its share price plummet in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After seeing its value more than halved trading in […]
Combined with rising costs of other essential bills such as energy he predicted rising interest rates would “crush the ability to spend” and could lead to a household debt crisis. Evidence has already suggested credit card borrowing is rising as households struggle to balance the books. The situation is also of concern to businesses dealing […]
Russia’s central bank revealed it had received 94.9 thousand complaints in the first three months of the year, which it said was 38.1 percent more than in the same period in 2021. The bank said one of the main reasons for the growth had been the impact of sanctions and uncertainty following the bank’s emergency […]
Matthew Ryan, Senior Market Analyst at Ebury, said there was a “non-negligible chance of a 50 basis point increase”, though he also predicted a 0.25 percent increase would be more likely. He also predicted voting could be more split with “a good chance that at least a couple of MPC members opt to hold rates […]
Like many in the hospitality industry Wetherspoon has been aiming to recover lost ground after two years of restrictions played havoc with sales. Its latest trading update shows sales are now slowly beginning to recover but still remain down on pre-Covid levels. For the 13 weeks to 24 April 2022 sales were down by four […]
Sberbank, which is by far Russia’s largest lender, will be joined by major banks the Credit Bank of Moscow and the Russian Agricultural Bank following agreement from the EU. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said the measures would “hit banks that are systemically critical to the Russian financial system and Putin’s […]
On 4 May, a grace period for payments on two sovereign bonds ends with Russia scrabbling to find a way of returning around $650 million (£518.86m) to investors despite sanctions. Fears of a default mounted after Russia attempted to make the overdue payments in rubles, despite the bonds being nominated in dollars. In an apparent […]
Across the UK around 850,000 properties are on tracker mortgages, which directly follow the Bank of England base rate, while 1.1 million are on standard variable rates which follow a rate set by the lender, though in reality this is often influenced by changes to the Bank of England rate. Many of those on such […]