Britain’s largest mutually-owned retailer, the Co-operative Group, has today posted “record sales and profits” for the 2009 year after its acquisition of Somerfield and its merger with the Britannia building society.
The group said underlying operating profits before significant items soared 20% to £473 million over the year, while revenue was £13.7 billion.
Meanwhile, the [...]
In its latest round-up of UK mortgage statistics, the Financial Services Authority has reported a fall in the number of homeowners in arrears.
In the final quarter of 2009, 378,000 households were behind with their monthly repayments (at a level equivalent to 1.5% of their outstanding balances).
The figure is down 4% on the previous quarter [...]
State-owned bank Northern Rock has today announced losses for the 2009 year fell to £258 million, compared with £1.36 billion in the previous year.
Despite the loss, the Newcastle-based bank said it is awarding staff £14.9m in bonuses but Gary Hoffman, the chief executive of Northern Rock, is waiving his payout.
Northern Rock said Mr Hoffman’s long-term [...]
Persimmon Homes managed 8,976 legal completions in 2009, compared with 10,202 in 2008, with an average selling price of £160,513 (down from £172,994 last year).
However, Britain’s largest house builder says it has a strong forward sales book of around £900 million, up 29% on 2008.
Ninety new sites are scheduled to open in the first half [...]
London-based bank Standard Chartered today announced a rise in pre-tax profits – meeting analysts expectations.
The bank, which has a strong presence in Asia, said pre-tax profits in 2009 were £3.4 billion ($5.15 billion), a rise of 13% on 2008 figures.
Meanwhile, revenue was up 9% to £10.14 billion ($15.18 billion).
However, while many other banks have opted [...]
In its second six-monthly set of complaints data relating to individual financial firms, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has today said complaints rose by 18% in the second half of 2009.
According to the FOS, it received 82,136 complaints between 1 July and 31 December 2009 – a rise of 12,295 compared with the first half [...]