Business Finance Junction – June 2014

Data from ONS show that illegal drugs and prostitution contribute around £10bn a year to the British economy.  For the first time statisticians are measuring the value of the drug-dealing and sex work – apparently about  “the same contribution as farming  – and only slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together” or accommodation services which included hotels, bed and breakfast and caravan parks.  The figures will be included in the category of household spending on “miscellaneous goods and services alongside life insurance, personal care products and post office charges”.  The smuggling of alcohol and tobacco are already included in GDP and make up some £300m.

A report by HSBC has revealed Hull offers the fifth-best yields in the country for landlords, generating 7.47 per cent of a house’s value for its owner every year, with average value in the city of £68,243 and annual rent of £5,100. With yields of 7.82% and rental accommodation making up almost a quarter of total housing stock, Southampton was placed the best for BTL where an average rent is £901 a month.  However, Siemans’ are set to start a £310m turbine site in Hull later this year and 2017 it will become a culture capital which is likely to promote price rises, however, there could be an effect on rent yields which, similarly for Blackpool, Manchester and Nottingham, are driven by cheaper stock. The other locations identified by the report for fastest growing yields were Reading, Brighton and Hove, Southampton, Cheltenham, Bristol, Bournemouth, Manchester, Oxford, Eastbourne, Hammersmith and Fulham. The reports best hotspots were Southampton, Manchester, Nottingham, Blackpool, Hull, Coventry, Oxford, Portsmouth, Liverpool and Cambridge.

Commissioned by the Treasury,  the  telephone survey of  5,000 businesses has cumulated in BBI (Business Banking Insight) , a data collecting website about individual banks service provision. Available for SME’s to rate their bank and who according to the survey, were  40% dissatisfied with the service offered by their account holder (of employers with nine or fewer people) and 35% dissatisfied (of employers with ten to two hundred and forty nine employees).

Property website Zoopla announced a stock market flotation  based in London, and launched only six years ago, it’s seeking a valuation of about £1bn and is looking to sell at least a quarter of the business.

Living up to their tagline (Here For You) RBS seem to be very available for some recent news articles. In no particular order: Mobile banking services for the their Group  has been hit with another IT glitch (Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were also affected), Lloyds Banking Group is joining a lawsuit  to sue RBS over a rights issue, filing claims for over 400 million pounds and, in the event of independence, there is a call to break up RBS, and unpick it from Lloyds Banking Group, and Clydesdale Bank for National Australia Bank Group and ‘for just twenty pounds a month’  businesses can receive a variety of cloud-based accounts services.
Image and Article credit: Copyright SUF © 2014