The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today voted to maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves at 0.5%.

The Committee also voted to continue with its programme of asset purchases, known as quantitative easing, totalling £175 billion financed by the issuance of central bank reserves.

The Committee expects the announced programme to take another month to complete, the scale of which will be kept under review.

Commenting on today’s decision, David Kern, Chief Economist at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said:

“Though we are not surprised by the MPC’s decision to keep Bank Rate at 0.5%, we are … Continue Reading

Last week, the FTSE 100 reached the 5,000 point mark for the first time this year. Now, Richard Moore, manager of the Santander UK growth fund at Santander Asset Management UK, gives his thoughts on what this means for the market:

“The rise to 5000 on the FTSE100 means that the market has rallied in excess of 40 per cent since the low point reached in early March 2009. Economic growth across the world has been picking up in response to unprecedented levels of Central Bank stimulus and looking ahead there are two reasons for investors to remain hopeful that the … Continue Reading

Historically, the interest rate charged by HM Revenue & Customs on tax repayments has been set at 1.5 percentage points below the Bank of England base rate.

When the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to reduce the Bank of England base rate to 1.5% in January, the interest on tax repayments fell to the lowest possible rate of 0% and has stayed at that level ever since.

Now, HMRC has announced that a new minimum interest rate of 0.5% is to be set on tax repayments, so that interest will still be payable even when the Bank of … Continue Reading

Lending to small businesses rose by £391 million in June, according to the British Banker’s Association, whilst almost 50,000 new small business banking relationships were established. In addition, deposits from small business grew by £577 million.

Commenting on the data, BBA statistics director, David Dooks, said:

“These figures provide more evidence of the high street banks’ support for small businesses. Structured term lending rose by £366 million in June, while deposits and numbers of new business relationships continued to hold up, perhaps reflecting improved business confidence in trading conditions.”

But speaking to the BBC yesterday, Chancellor Alistair Darling said, “I am extremely concerned … Continue Reading