News

The UK has been accused of turning a blind eye to Russian ‘dirty money’, which has been hidden in British assets and laundered through financial institutes in the City of London. A committee of MP’s has commented on how this has put national security at risk.

The foreign affairs committee remarked how the governments negligent approach to dealing with international money laundering is putting money in the hands of those who have the capabilities to use that money to harm the UK and its allies.

Earlier this morning, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a draft guidance outlining factors that should be considered by financial services firms under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA), when drafting and reviewing variation terms in their customer contracts.

The FCA has called for firms to be more fair and transparent with the terms in their consumer contracts. Adding that they would take action where they think the firm has been unfair or lacked transparency in their customer contracts.

Full Circle Asset Management, a wealth management firm which went into administration after losing a court case brought by a client is among the eight firms declared in default by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

They went into administration in December 2017, after the court ordered them to pay damages to a client of theirs because they had failed to apply stop losses as agreed. Moreover, they failed to keep their client in assets appropriate to their agreed risk profile.

Over the next three years BT is set to cut 13,000 jobs and move out of their headquarters in central London. With most of the back office and middle management jobs proposed as being cut, cutting their costs by £1.5 billion.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, said:

“This is probably the most significant transformation we have made in the last 10 years

“We need to do this to be competitive in the future. If we are compared with our peers, we are frankly too complex and overweight. While I recognise the pain, ultimately it is the right thing to do for the business.”

The owner of Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, CYBG, has made a £1.6 billion bid to take over rivals Virgin Money.

Virgin Money is a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. In a statement released by Mr Branson earlier today he stated the company had received a “preliminary and conditional proposal from CYBG to acquire the entire issued and to be issued share capital.”

Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM) have launched the first investment fund aiming to encourage gender diversity among UK firms. The L&G Future World Gender in Leadership UK Index Fund or GIRL Fund in short will prioritize investing in firms that have a good record in gender diversity, with women represented at all levels, in attempts to tackle gender inequality.

The UK’s largest energy supplier, British Gas has lost 110,000 energy supply accounts in the first four months of the year, its parent company Centrica discloses. Increased competition has meant customers continue to abandon the bigger energy firms.

The company lost 1.3 million accounts last year. Centrica commented that the intensity level of competition had been high, but the rate at which they were losing customers was slowing.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England has voted to keep interest rates on hold at 0.5%, as they report the UK has hit a ‘temporary soft patch’. They did however cut their growth forecast for the year to 1.4%, a 0.4% decrease from its previous forecast in March.

Disruption in the economy, caused by bad weather, was the reason the Bank offered for making the cut. However, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England remarked that it is likely rates will rise sometime this year.

Lloyds Banking Group parent company of Scottish Widows have formally been challenged by Standard Life Aberdeen for attempting to pull assets worth £109 billion from the company.

In February, Scottish Widows informed Aberdeen Standard Investments of a withdrawal of their assets. They said the reason for this was that Aberdeen had merged with Standard Life, an insurance business, now making them a competitor for Scottish Widows.