Mortgage News
UK house prices face ‘mixed picture’ – papers
House prices in the UK rose by 1.8% in October compared with the previous month – but this followed a big drop a month earlier, the Halifax has said.
The lender, part of the Lloyds Banking Group, said that the less volatile three-month on three-month comparison showed property values dropped by 1.2%, writes the BBC.
The average home cost £164,919, according to the survey.
Monthly changes in prices had been a mixed picture, the lender said, but it is not predicting a sustained fall.
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Lloyds new chief’s pay linked to lending
António Horta-Osório, the surprise new chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, will have his bonus linked to small businesses lending targets, after last-minute demands made by George Osborne, reports the Telegraph.
Mr Horta-Osório, chief executive of Santander UK, will join Lloyds in January and succeed Eric Daniels in March.
The Portuguese banker was told at a meeting with George Osborne last week that part of his £8.3m potential pay package will depend on him boosting business lending.
State workers to pay more for pensions
Millions of public sector workers will have to pay more into their pensions and retire on less in a purge on ‘ unsustainable’ gold-plated funds.
Former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Hutton will today take the axe to state employees’ retirement funds, which have created a £1trn black hole in the public finances, writes the Mail.
Whitehall sources expect him to propose a large increase in pension contributions – as much as 2% of salary for higher paid workers.
Upturn eases burden on Bank of England
Pressure on the Bank of England to announce a further round of quantitative easing in the UK lessened yesterday.
With the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee due to announce its latest decision on QE at noon today, the first indications of economic growth in the fourth quarter suggested a continued, if slower, pace of recovery than seen in the previous six months, writes the Independent.
The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (Cips) said its surveys of the manufacturing, construction and services sector, which cover the bulk of the economy, indicated a “lower risk of renewed downturn” and the equivalent of a quarterly growth rate of 0.4% in October, the second successive month of improvement.