House prices are 20 per cent overvalued says Fitch

House prices are 20 per cent overvalued says Fitch

What have the Brits, the Danes, the Swedes the Norse and the Kiwis all got in common? Answer, according to credit ratings agency Fitch, these are the countries most vulnerable to a potential crash in house prices.

And on that list of potential trouble, the UK sits rather ignominiously in third...Read More

You’re fired…up for a sale - Sir Alan agrees sale of Amstrad

Imagine the meeting. The man waits out side, on the surface calm, inside he is churning, and as a visible sign of his inner turmoil he scratches his beard.

The boss, James, asks him to come into the board room. “What I don’t understand” he begins “is this.” Your company used...Read More

Is Virgin Media an early victim as M&A worm turns?

“It’s the business model we don’t like,” said the private equity company that had been looking at Virgin Media. Even so, considering all this talk about a credit crunch, about how all of a sudden private equity is struggling to raise the funding, one can’t help the suspicion there’s a...Read More

Markets slide continues

One can assume a lot of writers for the Sunday papers made a lot of money last week.

Many columnists went into “told you so” mode, so presumably as they had been so confident markets were about to fall, they had put their money on derivatives, betting on market falls.

Don’t be...Read More

ABN nixes Barclays bid

It was a kind of begrudging nod to RBS and its consortium.

ABN Amro rather liked the 66 billion euros bid it received from Barclays. And it talked about how the synergies were there, how the strategic vision at the two banks fitted neatly together, but then money is...Read More

What markets did, what will they do next?

In some ways it was old news that did it. The last few years have seen the growing popularity of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs.) It’s a clever idea, when a bank agrees to lend a consumer or a business money, it then sells the loan on. It shares the...Read More

Markets in free fall, as prospects sit on a knife edge

Yesterday may prove to have been one one of the most eventful days of the year. The FTSE 100 saw its biggest one day loss in more than four years, the Dow suffered its second worst day of the year, a leading credit ratings agency threw a very unpleasant...Read More

The UK sees highest ratio of fixed investment since 1982

And yet it isn’t all bad news.

For one thing, the market would appear to have a self-correcting mechanism.

Too much credit fuelled too much risk-taking and too much inflation. Now, the market is reacting to that by upping the rate of interest.

Sure, higher rates will spell a slowdown in the economy,...Read More

Wall Street Journal offer in doubt

Talking of the Murdochs, while James busily buys Amstrad, the News Corp $5 billion purchase of The Wall Street Journal has hit a hurdle.

You may recall that the Wall Street Journal has a rather peculiar structure – its founding family the, Bancrofts, have this idea of preserving editorial integrity. The...Read More

HSBC looks to China as US crises recedes

Right now it feels as if the global economy is in two halves. On one side you have got the US, struggling under the weight of its massive trade deficit, which has borrowed itself to the point of crisis.

On the other hand, you have got the brave new world: India...Read More

Bank of England, will they dare?

Speculation is beginning to bubble on what the Bank of England will do next.

The Bank of England, as you know, meets on the second Thursday of every month to decide the rate of interest for the next month. Well, actually, sometimes it meets on the first Thursday, and this week...Read More

Private equity investigation puts investigation on hold

Well it is nearly August. That parliamentary committee that has been grilling the private equity boys is shutting down along with parliament until the Autumn. In the meantime it has made a decision – not to decide – yet. John McFall, chairman of Parliament’s Treasury Committee put it this way....Read More

But, are house prices about to slide?

Do you know what, the property industry doesn’t do bad news.

Take the Halifax for example. Recently it said this “Homeowners who took out a fixed rate deal two years ago will face higher mortgage payments when they re-mortgage. A borrower with a£114,000 mortgage, taking out a two year fix in...Read More

IMF says the world is getting better

Who said economics was a gloomy science?

The IMF has just released its latest forecast for the global economy, and it has upped its forecast for global growth. It now thinks the world’s economy will expand by 5.2 per cent this year and next, whereas it previously estimated growth of...Read More