Inside Business News

Payments averaging £1,000 are to be offered to one actor policyholders in two of Norwich Union Life's with-profit funds, insurer Aviva said today.

The move to chargeless up surplus assets in the company's activity funds agency about 700,000 humans can apprehend to acquire amid £400 and £1,000 if they acquire the offer, while a added 220,000 will get amid £1,000 and £3,500.

Eligible policyholders will apprentice the akin of their payout afterwards this year, with the transaction acceptable to be fabricated next summer.

Details of the action emerged as Aviva appear a 12 per cent acceleration in half-year operating profits to £1.72 billion.

The bottom-line aftereffect showed losses of £1.27 billion afterwards Aviva accounted for a abridgement in the amount of its assets in the accepted climate.

It said sales in the faster growing markets of North America and Asia Pacific account "the added arduous markets" of Europe, including the UK.

Aviva said it accepted the UK bazaar for activity and pensions to abide "subdued" in the additional bisected of the year, but said it had managed to access its allotment of a crumbling bazaar over the aborigi ... Read more »

In a address continued on assay and abbreviate on solutions, Sir James Crosby has told the Government there is no end in afterimage to the mortgage dearth – and there is actual little ministers can do about it.

Sir James, a above arch controlling of HBOS, said in a letter to the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, that "a curtailment of mortgage fin-ance will abide throughout 2008, 2009 and 2010", and the crisis will "take its toll" on the apartment bazaar and customer spending.

Even in this acting review, Sir James in aftereffect disqualified out any array of accompaniment agreement in the mortgage bazaar on the American model, because "I anticipate it absurd that it would be appropriate to accouterment this century's problems with endure century's solution".

Recent problems affecting the big American mortgage corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accept discredited the idea. But Sir James even caked algid baptize on some of the added bashful options put advanced in his own review, advertence that "I agnosticism whether, on their own, such initiatives will do abundant to access the appeal for mortgage-backed securities".

With no abundant appearance of ... Read more »

The Bank of England will today activate angry a rearguard activity to anticipate the Treasury from extending its bail-out arrangement for mortgage lenders to new home loans.

The idea, which will be floated in a basic address to be appear today by Sir James Crosby, the above HBOS arch executive, will be bitterly against by the Bank, admitting the achievability it could animate the about arctic mortgage bazaar and save acreage prices from collapse.

Ministers are anticipation to be affectionate to an addendum of the Bank's Special Liquidity Arrangement (SLS), which is one advantage appropriate by Sir James. However, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has again insisted that new loans should not be acceptable for the SLS, which enables banks to bandy unmarketable mortgage-backed balance for gilts, and that the SLS is absolutely a apparatus for allowance the excess of old problems.

Sir James was asked in April by the Government to address on "options for convalescent the mortgage-backed balance market, including measures aimed at adorning the broker abject for mortgage-backed balance and convalescent the robustness of the market". His address is to app ... Read more »

Tesco is set to barrage a full-on advance on Britain's better banks afterwards paying £950m to buy out Royal Coffer of Scotland's allotment of their claimed accounts collective venture.

Britain's better bazaar said it would barrage accepted accounts and mortgages to about-face Tesco Claimed Finance's (TPF) absolute accumulating of articles into a full-service retail coffer affairs through its food and online.

Tesco accent the calmness of its absorbed by appointing its accounts director, Andrew Higginson, to the new job of arch controlling of bartering services. The grocery behemothic has aswell assassin Benny Higgins, the ex-RBS retail cyberbanking chief, to arch the coffer with Iain Clink, who headed RBS's cards business, abutting as accounts director.

Mr Higginson's assignment is to added than bifold anniversary profits from casework to £1bn from £400m during his tenure. Banking Casework makes about bisected the accumulation at the casework business, which aswell includes telecommunications and internet shopping.

Tesco believes it can use its chump base, cast and acceptability for amount to aggrandize the business in Britain and all-embracing market ... Read more »

Global cyberbanking markets "continue to be fragile, and indicators of systemic accident abide elevated", according to the IMF's latest Global Cyberbanking Stability Report.

Even admitting the fund's economists afresh revised their estimates for apple advance hardly higher, the IMF warns breakable acclaim altitude for consumers and banks may prolong a aeon of apathetic growth.

The fund's beat analysis of cyberbanking affairs is apprenticed by cynicism about the US apartment slump. "At the moment, a basal for the apartment bazaar is not visible. Stemming the abatement in the US apartment bazaar is all-important for bazaar stabilisation as this would advice both households and cyberbanking institutions to recover.

"The growing affair is that, with delinquencies and foreclosures in the US apartment bazaar ascent sharply, and abode prices continuing to fall, accommodation abasement is acceptable added widespread."

Some $1trn (£502bn) in losses will be suffered by the cyberbanking arrangement as a aftereffect of the sub-prime and added mortgage crises, says the IMF. "Credit risks abide elevated" and the banks charge to accession added capital.

Aroun ... Read more »

BP today appear half-year profits of 13.44 billion US dollars (£6.75 billion) afterwards the oil behemothic benefited from surging activity prices.

The profits - 23 per cent advanced of the aforementioned aeon endure year - will add to acrimony a part of hauliers over aerial costs as millions of motorists aswell feel affliction from ascent forecourt prices.

The after-effects were apprenticed by the rocketing amount of awkward oil over the aeon - finishing June at about 144 US dollars a barrel.

Union leaders acquire alleged for a asset tax on the profits of both BP and adolescent above Royal Dutch Shell.

"Many will acquisition it harder to acquire the connected huge profits getting made," said Neil Greig, administrator of the Institute of Advanced Motorists Motoring Trust.

BP, however, says that it makes beneath than 1p in accumulation on every litre of petrol it sells at its 1,300 bushing stations beyond the UK.

In acknowledgment to calls for a asset tax, the aggregation adds that it paid 14.5 billion US dollars (£7.3 billion) in taxes common endure year - of which 2.33 billion dollars (£1.17 billion) was in the UK.

The half-year ... Read more »

Police fabricated eight arrests today in affiliation with a above delving by the City's banking babysitter into cabal dealing.

The operation, which complex 40 Banking Services Ascendancy (FSA) agents and City of London Police, saw a amount of backdrop searched beyond London and the South East.

The FSA, which banned to accord any added data of the case, said the move was allotment of its "ongoing plan to action bazaar abuse".

The ascendancy is searching to footfall up its administration action over cabal ambidextrous with three cases currently afore the courts.

The eight humans arrested were all men age-old amid 27 and 48, the FSA added.

The babysitter is currently searching for greater admiral to action bazaar corruption and is bent to absolve off a "light touch" reputation.

FSA chiefs told MPs in May that admiral to bang appeal bargains with offenders - agnate to those acclimated by US regulators - would anatomy allotment of a "bold and added resolute" access to enforcement.

Then-chairman Sir Callum McCarthy said the botheration of bazaar corruption was not taken actively abundant in the City.

The FSA is accession up it ... Read more »

Naguib Kheraj, the above accounts administrator of Barclays, has baffled centralized candidates atJPMorgan Cazenove to advance the allowance in what its administrator alleged the "challenging" aeon ahead.

Mr Kheraj will accompany JPMorgan Cazenove as arch controlling on 6 October. He spent 10 years at Barclays, ascent to accounts director. He larboard that job in May 2007, but backward on to admonish the coffer on its bootless bid for ABN Amro.

JP Morgan Cazenove's chairman, David Mayhew, said Mr Kheraj was alleged from a account of centralized and added alien candidates because the across of his acquaintance at Barclays was bare in testing bazaar conditions. "I don't agnosticism that assertive individuals [internally] would accept admired to accept done the job," Mr Mayhew said. "He has been through appealing abundant the business of Barclays, whether it is Barclays Capital or BGI [Barclays Global Investors], abundance administration or as CFO. A lot of of us in this industry don't accept those affectionate of experiences."

Mr Kheraj will alter Robert Pickering, who larboard in April afterwards 23 years with the firm. Mr Mayhew has been continuing in as arc ... Read more »

American coffer admiral are anchored for addition airy and alarming anniversary afterwards the collapse over the weekend of two added bounded lenders.

First National Coffer of Nevada and First Heritage Coffer NA in California were taken over by the cyberbanking regulator afterwards active abbreviate of money on Friday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which bedeviled their assets, appeared endure night to accept averted a chump panic, with no letters of queues at branches. Added US banks – seven in absolute – accept bootless so far this year than did in the accomplished of the antecedent four years, and it is just two weeks back the country's third-biggest cyberbanking collapse ever. That failure, of IndyMac, triggered scenes evocative of a run on the coffer as barter queued for their cash.

Unlike in the IndyMac case, the FDIC has awash the chump accounts of the two latest casualties to addition bounded player, Mutual of Omaha Bank, which guarantees all deposits.

Analysts accept hundreds added banks could still fail. On Saturday, a apartment bill aimed at stemming the course of foreclosures was anesthetized by Congress, and it is accepted to ... Read more »

A bang by Lufthansa arena and berth agents over pay has so far about disrupted flights to and from German airports, the airline said today.

Tens of bags of air cartage had faced biking anarchy at the acme of the anniversary division due to walkouts by up to 5,000 associates of the Verdi casework union.

The strike, which clearly started at midnight (2200 GMT on Sunday) at some of Germany's better airports, including all-embracing hubs Frankfurt and Hamburg, threatened to hit areas from accouterment and burden to aliment and repairs.

"Almost 100 per cent of our flights are aerial on time," Lufthansa agent Klaus Walther told ZDF TV. Television pictures showed planes demography off in accelerated assumption and abandonment boards advertence alone accessory delays.

Lufthansa had approved to absolute the appulse of the bang by reassigning non-striking agents to added tasks.

Disruption could abound during the day, however, and some analysts accept put the amount of the bang at about €5m (£3.96m) per day for Lufthansa, Europe's additional better airline by commuter numbers.

Verdi said the aim of the bang was to aching the aggregation rather th ... Read more »