Monday newspaper round-up: House prices, Tesco, BSkyB
Savers could pump as much as £50bn into housing over the next five years through buy-to-let crowd-funding websites, pushing up house prices and further stretching affordability. A research paper by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which examined crowd-funding platforms that enable investors to put small sums of money into schemes to buy part of a home, found that they could constitute a new liquidity shock to the housing market if they become more popular. – The Times
Ford Motor Co.
$13.04
11:10 25/04/24
FTSE 100
8,120.55
14:30 26/04/24
Sky
1,727.50p
16:34 06/11/18
Tesco
286.90p
14:30 26/04/24
Tesco executives in South Korea potentially face prosecution over allegations that the retailer sold customer data. The growing scandal in South Korea, Tesco’s biggest market outside the UK, is a further headache for the company as it battles against falling sales and the discovery of a £250m accounting black hole. Prosecutors in South Korea are investigating allegations that Homeplus, Tesco’s Korean arm, sold on the “personal information” of more than 5m customers to insurance companies. – The Daily Telegraph
BSkyB has held talks with some of the country’s largest mobile phone companies about launching a mobile phone service. The satellite broadcaster is understood to have held early-stage discussions with Vodafone, EE and O2 about a capacity deal for a “virtual” mobile phone network under the Sky brand. It is the latest sign of convergence between fixed and mobile telecoms operators and comes as BT prepares to launch its consumer mobile phone service through a wholesale deal with EE next year. – The Times
Britain’s economy could suffer a “huge uncertainty shock” if next year’s general election delivers a hung parliament, a leading economic forecaster warns. The prospect of no clear winner when Britain heads to the polling booths in May is already pushing down next year’s growth and business investment predictions, according to the EY Item Club’s autumn forecast. It also cites the weakening Eurozone economy and geopolitical tensions, including the Ukraine crisis, as threats that are making businesses nervous. – The Guardian
Buyers forced out of London by spiralling property prices have helped fuel a 10% annual rise in asking prices in the south-east – a rate that has now outstripped inflation in the capital. Asking prices in the south-east are 10% higher than they were a year ago, said Rightmove, compared with a rise of 9.6% in London. This makes the region the strongest performing in the country over the last 12 months. – The Guardian
Ford is to create 318 new jobs at Dagenham, Essex, in a new plant to build low-carbon engines for cars. Work begins next year, with the new engines being installed in commercial vehicles from 2016 and in private cars from 2018. Together, the new production lines will be able to produce 500,000 engines per year – 150,000 of them for passenger vehicles. “From pencil line to production line, these engines will be fully designed and built in the UK, securing the future of the plant at Dagenham,” said the business secretary Vince Cable. – The Guardian