What the Finance

We have all heard about payday loan company, Wonga, being forced to write off £220million worth of loans as well as scrapping the interest and charges for a further 45,000 customers. The question is: do payday loans have a future?  From the end of 2014, the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) will implement new regulations that […]

George Best is famously quoted as saying, “I spent 90% of my money on women, drink and fast cars. The rest I wasted.” That neatly sums up most people’s opinion on why so many rich footballers end up declaring themselves bankrupt. David James, goalie for Liverpool, Aston Villa and England, is the latest to join […]

Banks are becoming increasingly worried about the threat of cyber-crime. Last month, the Bank of England launched a new framework to access the risk to financial systems, by replicating threats being used by criminals, called CBEST. Why are they so worried and what exactly are they worried about are questions that will be addressed. Andrew […]

Nearly two years on since the ‘swap scandal’ hit the headlines, the repercussions are still being felt. When this story broke, some financial commentators predicted that this could be a bigger issue for the banks than the PPI mis-selling fiasco. Now, with companies still claiming, not just their money back, but compensation for consequential losses […]

PayPal President’s credit card details were stolen, his card was cloned and consequently used to finance a shopping spree. Irony was not lost on David Marcus as president of PayPal -the online secure payment service- who said that his credit card was probably ‘skimmed’ at the UK hotel he was staying at or at a […]

The back story of the most recent Wall Street scandal is as follows: In October 2011, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York hired a senior examiner, namely Carmen M. Segarra, to review the Legal and Compliance Division of Goldman Sachs. As her audit proceeded, Segarra concluded that Goldman Sachs had failed to address conflicts […]

The Investec Hot 100 is turning up the heat this year. Perhaps most startling is the widening of the north-south divide, with even more of the UK’s fastest-growing companies based on their average growth in profitable sales coming from the south east of England. The top spot is taken by a social enterprise, Potensial, which […]

RBS, HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays have announced that they will employ just over 600k people worldwide by the end of 2013, however, this is a sign of the times since this is 24% less than their peak in 2008 – just 5 years ago. Due to the European debt crisis, investors are increasing the pressure […]

The government appears to have paid attention to all those Donal MacIntyre undercover shows and drafted legislation to deal with pressure sellers and other sales sharks. You know the people. Door to door salesmen, timeshare hawkers and insurance men who make misleading claims and bully people into signing expensive contracts for things they don’t actually […]

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s announcement that he plans to start a credit union contradicts the Bible, which condemns money lenders in the temple. But as a means of curbing the power of payday lenders, the Church of England’s decision to cross over into the financial services industry may be a fine display of pragmatism from […]