Paper Summary 31st October 2013

RECRUITMENT & EMPLOYMENT

• In the Daily Mail, Linda Whitney reports candidates are still having to work hard at making their applications stand out – although Adzuna has some good news, saying fewer than two people are now chasing every job.  Mark Bull, chief executive of recruiter Randstad UK says, “Match your skills and experience to the vacancy but also understand what it offers that will fulfil you and ensure this comes through in your application and interview.”  He also advises candidates to demonstrate they are high-fliers who should be considered above others.  He says, “Highlight your extracurricular activities and the skills they have given you – employers look for rounded individuals”

 PERSONAL FINANCE

• The Daily Telegraph reports elderly people will have to spend nearly twice as much on care bills as previously thought before qualifying for state help.  The Coalition’s pledge to overhaul care by introducing a £72,000 cap on care costs is misleading because it excludes tens of thousands of pounds in accommodation fees according to care agency Prestige Nursing+Care.  Norman Lamb, the care minister, said the Government had always made clear that the cap would not apply to accommodation costs, which residents would continue to pay even after they qualify for state support.

PROPERTY

• Elsewhere in The Daily Telegraph, personal finance reporter Kyle Caldwell looks at how to make a deposit for a first house stretch further.  His advice includes investing in residential property funds and cutting back on discretionary spending including moving back in with friends or parents.  As average London rents hit £1,100 a month according to LSL Property Services, “would-be buyers are ploughing much of their hard-earned cash into landlord’s pockets”

Paper Summary: 14th October 2013

ECONOMICS

• The front page of the Financial Times is given over to Help to Buy.  Lloyds, one of Britain’s big four banks, has warned that the government’s scheme risks creating a dangerous bubble in property prices unless steps are taken to free up planning restrictions and boost the supply of housing.  António Horta-Osório, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the government’s initiative said the policy could only succeed if it led to broader reform.

 

PROPERTY

• Metro runs a piece on research from LSL Property Services about the cost of stamp duty – the average price that a first time buyer pays is now £1,457.  At the other end of the spectrum, the i paper, shows that almost 7,400 homes around Great Britain changed hands for more than £1m last year, a 2% increase on 2011.  Those figures, however, only cover property that was sold during 2012 – a small number of houses worth over £1m.  Zoopla puts the total figure at around 323,77 and of those, almost a quarter – or about 78,999 – have moved to valuations above £1m over the past 12 months.

 PERSONAL FINANCE

• Both the leader pieces in The Sun and the Daily Express look at green taxes and subsidies that form a substantial and growing component of domestic energy bills (adding £132 to our power bills according to an editorial in the Daily Mail).   While The Sun focuses on a case study, The Express says David Cameron could not only help millions of hard-pressed families but also remind them that many of these measures came in when Ed Miliband was climate change secretary in the last Labour administration – “to fail to adjust to the new straitened circumstances that have prevailed since the 2008 crash is not just bad politics but cruel politics as well. Many people are on the verge of having to choose between heating and eating.”

 

RECRUITMENT & EMPLOYMENT

• The Financial Times reports that London achieved the fastest rise on business activity last month, a survey of 1200 employers found for the Lloyds Banking Commercial regional purchasing managers’ index.

Paper Summary for Thursday 3rd October 2013

Economy

• Both The Times and the Daily Telegraph cover Mark Carney’s interview with ITV News Anglia (p.45 and p.B1 respectively) although the Daily Telegraph gives it much more space.  Mark Carney said “the economy is beginning to pick up”, but he stressed that a durable recovery would need to be built on growth outside the capital.  “This recovery, to gain traction, is going to turn on regions like East Anglia,” he said. “As important as London is, it is going to turn on what happens in the broader economy. It is not enough just to have a recovery in London and the South East.”  Mr Carney also warned potential homeowners to check they can afford their mortgages “when rates rise – as they will when the recovery takes hold”. Deflecting questions about a possible housing bubble, he said: “The bigger challenge is how do we ensure housing grows in a sustainable way.”

 

Property

• In an opinion piece in The Independent (p.17) Mira Bar-Hillel looks at the “economic insanity” of Help to Buy.  She says, “There is no evidence that the Government’s stated purpose for Help to Buy, which is to stimulate the building of more homes, desperately needed to relieve the housing crisis, is materialising.”  Elsewhere in The Independent (p.56), Russell Lynch reports Britain’s builders are constructing homes at the fastest pace for nearly a decade as the industry struggles to keep up with fresh demand – “Residential construction activity jumped at the sharpest rate since November 2003 during September, according to the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, as the Government’s Help to Buy scheme and cheaper mortgages send buyers flooding into the market.”  The Daily Telegraph also covers the story saying Help to Buy has propelled house building to a 10-year record (p.B1).

Employment & Recruitment

• David Cameron told the Conservative Party conference yesterday that young people should ‘earn or learn’ – announcing a policy that anyone under 25 will be barred from claiming housing or unemployment benefit, and said the state should play the role of a responsible parent – ‘nagging and pushing’ young people not to be idle, reported the Daily Telegraph.  The Independent called it an extension of US-Style “workfare”.  It quoted, Grainia Long, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, who said: “This would be a dangerous move. How do you build the economy without a young, mobile workforce?  It would mean that young people would be unwilling to take risks such as moving for work because there would be no safety net for them”.  The Daily Express took a more hard-line suggesting referring to the policy as a “benefits ban”, a “welfare crackdown” and a “benefits curb” under which young people could be “stripped of the right to claim jobless benefits”.  Perhaps the existing British workforce could do with the help? – The Daily Telegraph reports that overstretched staff are toiling at a more intense rate than they were a year according to new research from recruiter Randstad, with less than one in three reporting the same level of pressure last year.  The Daily Mirror and Metro run the same story, with the Mirror pointing out that social care workers are the most-spread thin employees in the country – over (54%) say they work hard already and cannot work any harder.  This isn’t going unacknowledged; elsewhere in his conference speech, the PM took time to praise social workers (Daily Telegraph, p.4 and The Times p.36).

Personal Finance

• The Financial Conduct Authority has been urged to crack down on advertising by payday lenders and tackle the way they collect and extend loans reports The Guardian. The regulator will announce new rules governing the sector this morning, and the government will publish the results of a survey it conducted among borrowers to establish whether lenders are meeting voluntary codes of practice.  That story is also covered in The Independent (p.13) and was the lead on The Today Programme this morning.

NACFB APPOINTS THE WRIGLESWORTH CONSULTANCY

The National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) has announced it has hired The Wriglesworth Consultancy as its retained public relations consultancy.  The appointment was made after a competitive pitch process involving a number of other agencies.

The trade body has hired Wriglesworth to communicate with small businesses via the national press.  Wriglesworth director James Staunton will lead a team drawn from the agency’s corporate division including Adam Jones, while founder and CEO John Wriglesworth will manage the analytical component of the brief.

Wriglesworth currently represents the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association and the Equity Release Council having previously worked with the Building Societies Association, and the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries.

Adam Tyler, CEO of the NACFB said, “We operate in an important, sophisticated part of the market and we need an agency that not only understands the complexities of commercial lending but also has an excellent reputation for working with trade bodies and lenders, and organisations communicating with small businesses.  We were looking for an agency that can bring more intellectual rigour to our PR, too.”

James Staunton, said, “The NACFB saw the value in the research skills we can bring to bear on the commercial lending market.  They aren’t interested in a purely nuts and bolts, bread and butter PR programme.  They want to do something more thoughtful and creative.  That suits us perfectly and we are looking forward to delivering it.”

Paper Summary: Friday 30th August 2013

Economics

• The revised forecasts by the British Chambers of Commerce are another sign of growing confidence.  But, writing in the Daily Express, Peter Cunliffe says its head John Longworth is right to warn against false dawns.  The Middle East Crisis struggling eurozone and Chinese slowdown could hamper progress.  “That is why it is vital the Government and the Bank of England create domestic conditions in which business can thrive.”

Personal Finance

• The Co-op has warned its banking business will go bust if bondholders don’t support its £1.5bn recapitalisation plan.  Last night The Evening Standard’s Nick Goodway was happy to leave the blame at previous management’s door in his comment on the story – as is the Daily Telegraph’s business leader piece.  But writing in the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer says it is not good enough for the new management team to simply kick the past into the long grass.  He says auditors KPMG were “asleep at the wheel”.  The Guardian’s Nils Pratley says members were complacent and also takes a pop at the FSA.  What’s the answer?  Goodway thinks the best bet, given the benefit of hindsight provided by RBS, would be to transfer the bad bank to UK Asset Resolution, which is already winding down the bad bits of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, as soon as possible.  The Times’ Ian King thinks the same – hand the keys over to UK Asset Resolution and save everyone a great deal of trouble.  CityAM says the group is right to hang onto its best assets while Brummer says Co-op, banking regulators and the Department for Business should try and claw back money from Peter Marks and former Britannia boss Neville Richardson.  Pratley says bondholders should argue for as large an ownership slice as possible of the re-capitalised bank (49%?) – in the end bondholders don’t have much choice but to hold their nose and back the management’s plan.  Peter Cunliffe is sure of one thing – “taxpayers cannot be expected to step in again”.

Recruitment & Employment

• The Daily Mail reports that the cost of a room in a care home has rocketed by 9.3 per cent in two years.  In the last year alone the cost rose by 3.5 per cent, a survey of 165 private care homes found.  The average cost of a room is more than double the average pensioner income of £13,799 and the gap ‘continues to increase’, the survey said.  Prestige Nursing+Care, which provides temporary staff for nursing and care roles and carried out the survey, said that since 2012 the average annual cost of a single room in a residential care home has risen by £963.  The Daily Express meanwhile concentrates on the absolute numbers from the same report saying pensioners face a bill of almost £30,000 a year if they need to go into residential care.

Property

• The Metro’s property section runs a brace of pieces on a new development within walking distance of the medieval town of Saffron Walden, The Avenue.  This is a development within mature tree-lined avenues and landscaped gardens.  Developer Hill Residential is helping to sell a mix of properties to appeal to all buyers, from first-timers to families and downsizers; CEO Andy Hill and says the properties are suitable for buyers considering relocating from London.  That may be a smart move – The Guardian’s House Price Blog quotes estate agent Marsh & Parsons, who say rising property prices mean that the cost of a two-bedroom home in the richest borough in London is set to break through the £1m-mark in early 2014.  The agent said the price of these properties had risen by 14% over the past year to reach £909,203.  With an average of 18 buyers chasing every property, it said prices were set to continue to rise.  If the £1m mark seems out of reach, The Metro also looks at Gun Place, EC1 – a “bargain buy” – a one bedroom flat in a converted warehouse off Wapping High Street.  That’s on sale for £400,000 with Cluttons.

Paper Summary: Thursday 22nd August 2013

Economics

• The recent run of good news on the economy came to an unexpected halt yesterday after data on the public finances showed Treasury coffers were drained last month for the first July in three years.  The Daily Mirror called it an “unmitigated failure”.  Once again, George Osborne has failed his own test; “if broken promises were a crime in politics, Mr Osborne would be incarcerated, with the key thrown away.”   But in its business leader, The Daily Telegraph says the Chancellor may yet have the last laugh on public finances.  Tax revenues in the four months of the current year have outperformed official forecasts with higher onshore corporation and income tax receipts providing concrete evidence of economic improvement.  Economists are not too alarmed, says Ruth Sunderland in The Daily Mail Comment column, Government spending has risen more quickly than expected, but that may be down to the timing of payments, and come out in the wash later in the year.  It is worth noting, too, Sunderland adds, that the figures are early estimates, and could look decidedly better after revisions.  The Guardian’s Business Analysis column is equally positive, pointing out that the markets focused on good news from the CBI that the country’s manufacturers are feeling their most chirpy since August 2011.

Recruitment & Employment

• The Business Commentary column in The Times says insurance workers are Britain’s proudest employees, with nine out of ten declaring themselves chuffed to be in the profession; “so the man from the Pru goes to work with smile on his face”.  The runners-up, according to a study by recruiter Randstad are property workers, of whom 83 per cent are “proud”, with media types third, at 81 per cent.  Lower down, banker-bashing has taken its toll with only 59 per cent of financial services employees expressing pride in their jobs.  Among accountants, “who know they’re viewed as boring”, only 44 per cent are chipper.  Rock-bottom, though, are railway staff, of whom only 32 per cent are proud of their jobs: “perhaps we should be patient with the hapless folk who get the blame whenever we’re late for work.”  That story is also running on Sky News and this morning’s Today Programme on Radio 4.

Personal Finance

• Millions of pensioners are missing out on bumper retirement pay-days because of an industry rip-off according to the front page of Daily Express.  Giles Sheldrick says official data shows how some of the UK’s biggest insurers are short-changing pensioners by offering annuity rates up to 30 per cent below the best deals on the market.  The Association of British Insurers published rates offered by its members to customers looking to convert their pension into an annuity to guarantee a regular income exposing the disparity between providers.  A 65-year-old with average pension savings of £24,000, and in good health, can get £1,099 a year from Reliance Mutual but just £839 with Scottish Widows.

Property

• The Financial Times puts the news that Kensington council has asked a hedge fund manager told to dig deep for luxury London basement on its front page.  The council has demanded a fee of more than £800,000 from a man seeking to build a 900 sq m subterranean extension underneath two adjacent west London properties (including a swimming pool and spa).  The sheer scale of the extension prompted the council to ask for the one off fee when it granted planning permission which will go towards affordable housing elsewhere in the borough.  Such payments, known as “Section 106 agreements” are normally confined to large-scale commercial developments or housing estates.

Paper Summary – Tuesday 2nd July

Economics
The front pages of the FT, CityAM and the Daily Telegraph’s business section run stories on Mark Carney’s first day at the Bank of England. Described by the Metro asthe George Clooney of banking, the new governor arrived to much press attention and hype about how he may be able to help repair the UK economy. Tara Ricks, managing director of specialist recruiter Randstad Financial & Professional, said: “The hype could quickly become a hindrance once Mr Carney takes the reins. Living up to potential and promise can be paralysing. But make no mistake, it will be harder for him than in Canada. There will be more obstacles to his reforming instincts. More vested interests to tackle. More chronic weaknesses in the economy. And more pressure from the media.”

Property
The Express says there were 58,242 mortgage approvals for home purchases in May – the highest in three years. The Bank of England’s Money and Credit survey showed the loans approvals were worth a total £8.7 billion, up from 54,354 in April and the highest level since December 2009. The home loans figures reflect an improving housing market – boosted by the Funding for Lending (FLS) and Help to Buy stimulus schemes.

Personal Finance
Up to 1.4 m expats living in Europe could lose their pension rights if Britain leaves the EU. A report for MPs suggested that British workers would lose their automatic right to be part of the European Union’s coordinated benefits system, leaving them with “significantly reduced” entitlements to pensions. Farmers’ incomes would also suffer from the loss of EU subsidies, while British fisherman could be plunged into new “cod wars” with rival fleets as fishing grounds are redrawn. However, the 112-page study, which tentatively outlined the implications of leaving the EU, suggested that foreign investment in Britain may benefit from more freedom to negotiate agreements with other countries. That’s in the Telegraph.

Recruitment & Employment
The big remuneration story of the day is MP’s pay. The Sun’s editorial says any MP accepting a 15 per cent pay rise might as well write voters a resignation vote – they already earn more than £66,000 – well over twice the average Britain. “It would be obscene for MP’s to trouser such a rise”. The Times takes a more pragmatic approach; its leader piece says while the cause of higher pay for MPs is not popular, the quality of personnel in Parliament will suffer if remuneration is allowed to lag other professions. Meanwhile The Guardian says “MPs have never had it so good” and that they can do without another pay boost now.

Paper Summary: 28th May 2013

Economics
In its editorial, The Guardian looks at Gordon Brown’s attempts to conceal the huge sums he was pumping into UK infrastructure projects via the Private Finance Initiative. The Guardian says that in today’s slump, economic respectability requires more proactive pursuit of growth but that George Osborne’s PF2 is not delivering. The IMF is only the latest establishment voice to call on Mr Osborne to increase capital spending. The Guardian suggests that the arm’s-length borrowing of Gordon Brown “was frequently on outrageous terms, but the hospitals got built…”

Property
The front page of the Daily Mail is given over to Nick Boles, the Planning Minister, who has suggested building more houses will create more “human happiness” than preserving fields. The Mail’s leader piece admits that “with mass immigration, increasing longevity and marital breakdown, only a fool would deny that Britain faces an acute and growing housing crisis” and that there’s a “strong case for streamlining planning procedures and speeding up building where permission has already been granted”. But the paper says Boles is advocating “tearing up” restrictions on barn conversions and “browbeating councils into designating land for development”. “With acres of brownfield sites available,” it says, “there is no excuse for imposing them where they are not wanted” concluding “[our housing shortages] need not – and must not – be solved at the expense of our children’s and grandchildren’s heritage.”

Personal Finance
The number of renters in London has grown dramatically over the past 10 years, with 50% of people now renting, according to Cluttons. 30% of people in the UK rent. City AM says the report cited the rising prices of London property as one reason for the emerging gulf. Metro offers solace for those looking to get on the property ladder; David Newnes of LSL Property Services says easing mortgage lending criteria is helping more first time buyers to realise their dream of home ownership.

Recruitment & Employment
The Independent’s leader piece is given over to “the jobless recovery”. The piece addresses a report from the think-tank The Resolution Foundation on the current employment paradox – an economic downturn without an equivalent loss of jobs – could be matched by an economic upturn without the increase in jobs that would be expected to go with it. The Independent says “if this is the future, ministers have some thinking to do beyond the standard calls for more apprenticeships, better training, and incentives to encourage more long-term unemployed people into work.”

Paper Summary for Friday 10th May

Economics

• The latest data from the National Institute for Economic & Social Research suggests that over the three months to April, output expanded by 0.8 per cent.  In the Daily Mail Alex Brummer addresses all those propagating the idea that Britain is heading for a triple-dip, “I have a message. It isn’t going to happen.  If that were to be annualised… the economy would be expanding at a remarkable 3% plus! Crisis, what crisis?”  The same paper’s editorial says “Despite all the doom-mongering by Labour and the BBC, there are signs that the economy is beginning to heal”.  The Times is also positive with Ian King saying the underlying picture is steadily improving.  But CityAM’s Allister Heath sounds a note of caution.  “While it would be pathetic not to rejoice that the overall economy is finally expanding…   it remains too soon to be sure…  The last thing we need now is complacency.”

 

Property

• LEX looks at housing market policy – where stimulus has come from “increasingly generous” FirstBuy, NewBuy and now Help to Buy programmes.  It says on a rolling 12-month basis, despite the first two schemes, private sector housing starts were still down 8 per cent year on year in the final quarter of 2012, with completions up 3 per cent.  “Perhaps the best that could be said was that the private sector showed some pick-up in the latter half of 2012, and looked slightly less dismal than the market overall.  Total annual housing starts… [were] woefully short of estimated needs.”  But it goes on to say housebuilders should cheer the HTB scheme “from their rooftops”.  It requires no financial commitment on the builder’s part, and is accessible by a broad swath of buyers.  And it might be working.  Yesterday Barratt said HTB had contributed 400 reservations over five weeks, a significant uptick from the earlier incentives.  Meanwhile, The Times property supplement runs a feature on Homes With Artists Studios, featuring a ground floor apartment in HollandPark on the market with Marsh & Parsons.  And The Times reports that soaring rents tightening the squeeze on tenants is being blamed for claims by landlords seeking to regain possession of their property surging to their highest level in nearly a decade.  Average monthly rents in England and Wales rose by more than 4 per cent over the year to £735, and 8.5 per cent of all rent is in arrears, according to LSL Property Services.

 

Personal Finance

• The Guardian says the buy-to-let market “burst into life in the first quarter” as the CML reported gross mortgage lending to landlords had jumped to £4.2bn up from £3.7bn year on year.  The Daily Telegraph quotes David Whittaker of Mortgages for Business (as does The Guardian) who said the market was “going great guns” as landlords tried to take advantage of the returns on offer.  But The Guardian sounded a note of caution points out that lending to landlords has jumped despite efforts by the government to bolster loans to first-time buyers.   In their piece on the CML’s news, CityAM added that e.surv said total house purchase lending was up two per cent in April, with the number of approvals rising from 53,504 to 54,364.  The Guardian said e.surv’s data suggested lenders are also loosening the strings on low-deposit mortgages.

 

Recruitment & Employment

• Editorials in the Financial Times and the Daily Express both look at immigration.  The Financial Times says the immigration Bill in the Queen Speech was “a victory for gimmickry over policy” and that the “chaos on the country’s borders and in the visa processing system fly in the face of official claims that Britain is open for business.”  While the editorial ends by urging the Tories to “return to their role as pragmatic friends of business, who know that immigration is something to be managed, not reviled,” the Daily Express suggests that “Britain should keep the floodgates firmly shut”.  Elsewhere in the paper Frederick Forsyth column is given over to his support for Susi Wolf, the Williams F1 test driver, sponsored by Randstad.

News Round-Up: Tuesday 12th March

Economics

• In the FT, the lead LEX story focuses on leverage ratios, the basic measure of a banks’s equity as a proportion of total assets.  In a report out yesterday, the Banking Commission of MPs took issue with the government’s decision to stick with the 3 per cent minimum required by Basel III (they want UK banks to be subject to 4 per cent requirement, in line with the original proposals of the Independent Commission on Banking).  Lex says while holding slightly more capital might save a bank in a crisis, bigger capital requirements wil restrict the flow of credit into the economy – which is their “trump card” according to the Daily Mail’s James Samon who also looks at the legislators’ report (their second) in his City Focus column.  In the Guardian, Nil Pratley says that George Osborne has little excuse not to listen to the report.

Personal Finance

• Writing in the Times, Ian King says it is unlikely the chancellor will reintroduce taper relief for capital gains tax, as called for by Liam Fox.  King believes that other policies, such as cutting employers’ national insurance contributions, would be more likely to boost wealth creation.  Meanwhile, writing in The Independent, Alex Johnson says the average asking price of properties for sale in urban areas in England is up 1.9% on this time last year, while asking prices for properties in the country are down 5.1% over the same period, quoting new research from PrimeLocation.com.

Property

• House sales in the three months up to February reached a two and a half year high, boosting hopes of a recovery in the housing market. According to RICS, the increase in sales was driven by improved mortgage availability thanks to the government’s Funding for Lending Scheme. RICS said they expect house price to edge upwards in the coming months off the back of the improvement in sales

Recruitment & Employment

• A surprise pick-up in public sector vacancies and recruitment by banks has helped push the employment market to its strongest level since before the recession. In banking. 13% more employers increased staffing levels rather than reduced them. Growth in public sector jobs is likely to outstrip the continued rise in private sector employment in Q2, with local authorities and the NHS leading the way.