Latest news with #ThreadneedleStreet
The Independent
29-07-2025
- The Independent
Tuk-tuk driver caught on camera stealing £24,000 of wine
A tuk-tuk driver, Iuliu Kubola, was captured on CCTV stealing £24,000 worth of wine from a restaurant in the City of London. The 61-year-old removed 73 bottles from Piazza Italiana on Threadneedle Street on 6 May, concealing them in a wheelie bin before leaving on his tuk-tuk. Kubola, from Islington, was arrested on 22 June after an officer recognised him following a police briefing. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September for the theft. Watch the video in full above.
Telegraph
27-07-2025
- Telegraph
Tuk-tuk driver uses wheelie bin to steal £24k of wine
A tuk-tuk driver stole £24,000 worth of wine after piling it into a wheelie bin. Iuliu Kubola, 61, broke into a restaurant on Threadneedle Street, London, with a crowbar before fleeing with 73 bottles. CCTV footage showed him calmly examining the labels of bottles before stuffing them into his jacket. He gently placed other bottles in a wheelie bin, which he then struggled to drag from Piazza Italiana to his tuk-tuk, before cycling away. The theft on May 6 was followed by a further visit to the same restaurant to steal three more bottles of wine worth around £680 on June 15. The City of London police said he went back again on June 19, but left without taking anything. His raids also caused damage to doors and locks, which cost nearly £1,500 to repair. He was arrested on June 22 after an officer recognised him. He has since admitted three counts of burglary. Det Con Marcus Fairclough said: 'Thanks to the good work by our officers, who spotted him and quickly made enquiries and the arrest, Iuliu Kubola will face the consequences of his criminality. 'We will attend all reports of break-ins in the City, giving us the best chance of making an arrest and collecting evidence from a scene. 'We will always take this type of criminality seriously and thoroughly investigate all evidential leads, including forensics, to bring those perpetrators to justice. Burglary has a significant impact on businesses and residential communities.' Andrew Walker, of the City of London police, added: 'Our fast response is vital to maximise forensic opportunities and lessen the impact on the victims. ' Being burgled is horrendous; not being able to tidy up or open your business and resume trading exacerbates this massively. 'The victim is at the heart of everything we do. Delivering them justice, whilst minimising the impact that crime has on them, is the bedrock on which City of London police forensic services operates.' Kubola will be sentenced in September.
Telegraph
14-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Bailey warns Reform will make ‘no money' from Bank of England raid
Reform wants to stop this money being paid out and use it instead to help fund an increase in the tax-free personal allowance to £20,000, as well as tax cuts for businesses. But Mr Bailey warned these savings were 'illusory', telling The Times: 'Please don't rely on that as income because it's not gonna be there.' 'Akin to a tax on banks' The Bank's unwinding of its money printing programme has come under increasing scrutiny owing to estimates that it could cost the taxpayer up to £150bn. The Telegraph revealed that Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, wrote to the Bank last month, accusing Threadneedle Street of prioritising bank profits over the interests of working people. Mr Tice said the unwinding of this programme, known as quantitative tightening (QT), was pushing up borrowing costs and piling pressure on the public finances. The Bank is reportedly preparing to fight back against accusations that QE did not provide value for money by publishing estimates of how much its bond buying reduced UK borrowing costs. Mr Bailey also published a five-page riposte to Mr Tice in which he warned that Reform's plan would hurt lending to the wider economy. He also warned that removing interest on reserves 'is akin to a tax on banks'. Mr Tice said he was planning to take up an offer by Mr Bailey to meet, although a date has not yet been confirmed He said: 'He is accepting my point on QT it sounds, which is good; and I look forward to discussing the interest payments when we meet. He does accept it is up for debate.' Mr Bailey also suggested last week that recent volatility in the bond market could change the way it sells its huge stockpile of UK debt going forward. The Bank is currently losing much more money on its stockpile of long-term debt because it is selling the bonds through QE evenly, resulting in steeper losses on long-term debt. While Mr Bailey would not be drawn on a looming decision in September, he said policymakers would 'look carefully' at how the rise in long-term borrowing costs 'plays into our decision'.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
FTSE 100 LIVE: Stocks slip as Bank of England set to hold interest rates amid inflation fears
The FTSE 100 (^FTSE) and European stocks slipped on Thursday as traders await the latest decision on UK interest rates from the Bank of England (BoE), and weigh up the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Money markets believe there is a 96% chance that Threadneedle Street leaves rates on hold at 4.25% at noon on Thursday, and only a 4% possibility of a quarter-point cut. It comes as UK inflation fell last month from 3.5% to 3.4%, but remains above the BoE's 2% target, which could push higher if the Israel-Iran conflict drives up oil prices. Zara Nokes, global market analyst at JP Morgan Asset Management said: "Escalating tensions in the Middle East, and the upward pressure this is putting on oil prices, will only add to the Bank of England's concern about easing rates too quickly. "The Monetary Policy Committee will face a tougher choice when meeting again in August, given the combination of still-sticky inflation and evidence that the labour market is quite clearly cooling. "A deterioration in the labour market should, in theory, put downward pressure on inflation, but until there are clear signs of this in the hard data, the Bank should be careful not to claim victory over inflation quite yet, not least because of the uncertain geopolitical climate.' On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve also kept rates unchanged at 4.25%-4.50% as widely expected. The updated Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) saw the median dot still projecting 50bps of cuts by year end, but with a hawkish shift in the distribution as seven officials now expect no cuts this year. In the press conference, Fed chair Jerome Powell highlighted that uncertainty remains historically elevated, even if it has diminished since the last meeting in early May. London's benchmark index (^FTSE) was 0.4% down in early trade. Germany's DAX (^GDAXI) dipped 0.7% and the CAC (^FCHI) in Paris also headed 0.7% into the red. The pan-European STOXX 600 (^STOXX) was down 0.6%. Wall Street is set for a negative start as S&P 500 futures (ES=F), Dow futures (YM=F) and Nasdaq futures (NQ=F) were all in the red. The pound was 0.1% down against the US dollar (GBPUSD=X) at 1.3412. Stocks: Create your watchlist and portfolio Follow along for live updates throughout the day: Stocks in Asia retreated overnight amid ongoing worries about conflict in the Middle East. The Nikkei (^N225) fell 1% on the day in Japan, while the Hang Seng (^HSI) fell 2% in Hong Kong on heavy selling of tech-related stocks. Shares in Japan's Nippon Steel rose 3% after it announced that its acquisition of US Steel, which met with American government opposition for more than a year, was finally completed. The Shanghai Composite ( was 0.8% down by the end of the session and in South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) managed to add 0.2% on the day. Across the pond on Wall Street, US stocks drifted to a mixed finish after the Federal Reserve indicated it may cut interest rates twice this year, though it is far from certain about that. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was flat, at 5,980.87, the Dow Jones (^DJI) dropped 0.1%, to 42,171.66, and the Nasdaq (^IXIC) added 0.1%, to 19,546.27. President Donald Trump also increased tensions by warning that he may get directly involved in the conflict with Israel, however, Iran's supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender. In the bond market, the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes dipped to 4.396% from 4.405% a day earlier. US financial markets will be closed on Thursday for the Juneteenth holiday. Good morning, and welcome back to our markets live blog. As usual we will be taking a deep dive into what's moving markets and happening across the global economy. In the day ahead we have rates decisions from the BoE, Norges, and SNB. We will also get ECB's President Lagarde, Villeroy, Nagel and Guindos speak. It's a quieter day for data releases, including Eurozone April construction output and the June Philadelphia Business Outlook in the US. Here's a quick snapshot of the agenda: 7am: Trading updates: Wise, Whitbread Plc, NCC, Urban Logistics REIT 8.30am: Swiss National Bank interest rate decision 9am: Norges Bank interest rate decision 12pm: Bank of England interest rate decision 12pm: Bank of Turkey interest rate decisionStocks in Asia retreated overnight amid ongoing worries about conflict in the Middle East. The Nikkei (^N225) fell 1% on the day in Japan, while the Hang Seng (^HSI) fell 2% in Hong Kong on heavy selling of tech-related stocks. Shares in Japan's Nippon Steel rose 3% after it announced that its acquisition of US Steel, which met with American government opposition for more than a year, was finally completed. The Shanghai Composite ( was 0.8% down by the end of the session and in South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) managed to add 0.2% on the day. Across the pond on Wall Street, US stocks drifted to a mixed finish after the Federal Reserve indicated it may cut interest rates twice this year, though it is far from certain about that. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was flat, at 5,980.87, the Dow Jones (^DJI) dropped 0.1%, to 42,171.66, and the Nasdaq (^IXIC) added 0.1%, to 19,546.27. President Donald Trump also increased tensions by warning that he may get directly involved in the conflict with Israel, however, Iran's supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender. In the bond market, the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes dipped to 4.396% from 4.405% a day earlier. US financial markets will be closed on Thursday for the Juneteenth holiday. Good morning, and welcome back to our markets live blog. As usual we will be taking a deep dive into what's moving markets and happening across the global economy. In the day ahead we have rates decisions from the BoE, Norges, and SNB. We will also get ECB's President Lagarde, Villeroy, Nagel and Guindos speak. It's a quieter day for data releases, including Eurozone April construction output and the June Philadelphia Business Outlook in the US. Here's a quick snapshot of the agenda: 7am: Trading updates: Wise, Whitbread Plc, NCC, Urban Logistics REIT 8.30am: Swiss National Bank interest rate decision 9am: Norges Bank interest rate decision 12pm: Bank of England interest rate decision 12pm: Bank of Turkey interest rate decision Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain's money-printing experiment turns into a £150bn taxpayer ‘disaster'
The dangers of printing money are well-documented. Too much money chasing too few goods leads to higher prices and lower growth. Hundreds of billions of pounds of so-called quantitative easing (QE) during the financial crisis skewed this perception as the Bank of England repeatedly fired up the printing presses to try to revive the UK's ailing economy. Inflation at first failed to rear its ugly head, until it did. And policymakers and taxpayers are now counting the cost of Britain's £895bn monetary experiment. QE is a process where Threadneedle Street creates money that is used to buy government bonds, known as gilts, to help drive down the cost of borrowing. Commercial lenders then park that cash at the central bank where they earn interest at the current base rate. When interest rates were at record lows of 0.1pc during the pandemic, the Bank earned far more on the returns from government bonds than it had to dish out in interest. By the end of 2021, the Old Lady was in profit to the tune of £123.9bn. But that was quickly eroded when interest rates started rising, with a 'consistently higher Bank Rate' resulting in 'large interest losses' of £18.5bn in the last financial year alone, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). But that's not all. The Bank is also actively selling its stockpile of gilts back to the market in a move called quantitative tightening (QT), crystallising billions of pounds of losses for the taxpayer. Many economists, politicians and central bankers believe this is a mistake, as it means that some of the bonds Threadneedle Street bought during the crisis are being sold at knockdown prices. In some of the most extreme cases, bonds bought for the equivalent of £1 have been sold for 28p. These so-called 'valuation losses' will dwarf the money being paid out in interest if the Bank continues to actively reduce its stockpile of gilts by around £48bn a year. The total cost to the taxpayer over the scheme's lifetime is currently estimated at around £150bn by both the Bank of England and OBR. That's the equivalent of a £5,000 tax on each household. QE was never intended to be permanent, but few predicted it would turn out to be so expensive. When then Labour chancellor Alistair Darling first authorised the so-called asset purchase facility (APF) to hoover up £50bn of bonds in January 2009, he assured the public that the assets would be 'held for no longer than is necessary to ensure stability and protect taxpayer interests'. However, more than 15 years after the first tranche of money-printing was put into action, the amount of gilts held in the Bank's asset purchase facility remains at £620bn. Lord King, governor of the Bank at the time, says policymakers have reached for the QE tool too last week, he said: 'I think what that led to was a view that 2016 ... [became], I've got some bad news here, we've voted to leave the EU. If we get bad news, we've got to do something; let's do QE. Pandemic: bad news again, what do we do? Let's do QE. 'But there are some kinds of bad news that do require a monetary policy response and other kinds of bad news that do not justify a monetary response. 'You've got to be able to tell the difference between the two. I think the QE in 2020 went way beyond stabilising markets without any plausible justification for it.' Research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) last year blamed active QT, where the Bank sells bonds back to the market before they mature, for raising Britain's long-term borrowing costs by around 0.7 percentage points. Sir John Redwood, a former director of policy for Margaret Thatcher, says the damaging costs of QT are unlikely to prevent similarly bad choices from being made in the future. 'I don't think the authorities learnt anything from this disastrous experiment that is having such a big impact on the public finances,' he says. 'It is self-inflicted harm on a huge scale.' 'The Bank of England has provided no cogent justification for selling bonds for big losses in the market. It says it doesn't have a monetary impact. Well, that is wrong [and] no chancellor has challenged it.' There is a general sense that politicians are starting to wake up to the issue. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, wrote to Andrew Bailey last week in a letter that impressed on the Governor three times that the process of reducing the Bank's stockpile of bonds must provide 'value for money'. The Bank's decision to delay an auction of long-term debt after Donald Trump sparked bond market jitters with his tariff tirade shows that it's listening, while the Treasury's Debt Management Office is also moving away from long-term debt. There is another big shift happening in the background that will, with any luck, help the Bank leave behind its radical money-printing era. Instead of buying bonds, the central bank wants to move to a more normalised system of providing cash on demand through what's known as repurchase or 'repo' operations. Paul Tucker, a former Bank deputy governor, says it's time to move away from a reliance on QE to fix crises. 'I think in this country, the Bank has lost the sense of a distinction between a market maker of last resort intervention, where you purchase government bonds, and a QE intervention, where you're purchasing government bonds to stimulate aggregate demand,' he says. 'The bank has, since the liability-driven investment (LDI) episode, gotten closer to what I think should be orthodoxy.' Orthodoxy means actually sticking to the late Darling's principle of temporary and targeted intervention. It turns out that targeted intervention can be quite profitable for the taxpayer. The Bank made £3.5bn by buying almost £19.3bn of long-term government debt following the LDI crisis that threatened pension funds in 2022. Meanwhile, it comes as politicians across the spectrum are paying greater levels of attention to the process of quantitative tightening. Reform has vowed to stop paying interest on reserves held at the central bank in a move it claims could save £35bn a year. However, Bailey warned in a recent speech that this could undermine the Bank's task of keeping inflation low 'and could cause significant harm to the credibility of monetary policy'. In other words, the Bank could lose control. Bailey has also highlighted that moving back to a world where the Bank responds to demand rather than actively buying gilts could make taxpayers more cash. Threadneedle Street takes a small cut every time commercial banks tap the Bank for cash and that money can quickly add up. Sanjay Raja, at Deutsche Bank, says there is a case for winding down the Bank's stockpile of gilts entirely. 'This would, ultimately, reduce the Treasury's transfer payments to the Bank, and reduce the fiscal burden of its QE operations,' he says. Raja also believes the bar for future QE is already higher. 'The effects of QE have been mixed,' he says. 'Concerns on taxpayer value for money have also now come to the fore. 'And given the political attention that QE and QT have attracted, central bankers may be more wary of turning to QE in the first instance – unless, of course, the occasion calls for it.' But don't wave goodbye to QE just yet. One former insider says that while the Old Lady may be scarred by money-printing, that doesn't mean she won't fire up the printing presses again. 'I can tell you that the government of the day were desperate for us to do whatever we could,' they recall. 'They wanted to go much further, much faster, buy all sorts of stuff, and whatever it took to rescue the economy.' So if desperate times fall again, QE may be the Bank's only option – regardless of how much pain it will cause the taxpayer for decades to come. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
