International News

The UK Office for Investment (OfI) and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company, today signed an agreement at Downing Street to significantly expand the UAE-UK Sovereign Investment Partnership (UAE-UK SIP), a framework for investment announced in March 2021. Over the next five years, the UAE-UK SIP will drive a significant increase in investment across a further three sectors: technology, infrastructure, and energy transition, as well as build on the existing programme of life sciences i...

We recently asked what your dream home would look like, where it would be, and how many rooms it would have – and thousands of you answered! The results of our survey are now in, and they show that we’re a pretty practical nation when it comes to the type of property we dream of living in. Forget the fanciful notions of walk-in wardrobes, bespoke at-home gyms or luxurious swimming pools, the convenience of a utility room and a home office are far more important to most people. ...

Price rises have seen the biggest jump since records began in 1997 as the economy continued to reopen. Official figures show that the increase in the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, hit 3.2% in the year to August. Higher prices in restaurants and for recreation and food were behind the spike, up from 2% the previous month. The cost of living rose less rapidly in July because of lower clothing and footwear prices. However, the Office for National Statistics (...

The UK has a brand new cheapest supermarket, it has been announced, and it's not Aldi or ASDA. Lidl has been named the UK's cheapest - pushing rival Aldi from the top spot. The German discounter was the best-value grocer in August, coming up top against all of the Big Four supermarkets as well as fellow rival Aldi. With the kids home full time, shoppers would have paid £24.11 for a basket of 23 essential items at Lidl, that’s 43p less than Aldi and £9 less than...

People who have lost thousands of pounds in the post-Grenfell fire safety crisis have asked for urgent help amid spiraling insurance and service costs. Deborah Polverino, from Cardiff, saw her annual service charge rise from £3,000 to nearly £7,800 after her building failed fire safety tests. Campaigners warned people could go bankrupt and lose their homes. The Welsh government said it was "working hard to develop funding options". A spokesman said the "complex nature" of...

LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Britain needs to ease taxes on banks and make it easier to hire staff from abroad, its financial and professional services lobby said in a blueprint to help London unseat New York as the world's top international financial center within five years. The strategy paper on Tuesday from TheCityUK reiterated some ideas already aired in government-backed reports and elsewhere in recent months as the City of London looks to recoup ground lost following Britain's de...

This is a very significant tax rise, with little precedent outside of a Budget. It doesn't just break a manifesto promise, it drives a JCB through it, with £11.4bn a year in extra taxes that were the subject of a guarantee that they would not go up. The March Budget of this year was already the most significant tax-raising Budget since 1993. But a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic recession and associated long-lasting damage to the NHS do give some rationale for thinking about how a...

It is already the UK’s largest mortgage lender, and now Lloyds Banking Group aims to become one of its biggest private landlords, with a target of buying 50,000 homes in the next 10 years. Lloyds is the latest big name on the high street to move into the property market: last month it emerged that the retailer John Lewis was considering plans to build 10,000 rental homes over the next decade. According to accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, “everyone wants to become a landlord&rdqu...