ARIA PAZZO

British finance minister Rishi Sunak is considering a cut to the 5% rate of value-added tax on household energy bills, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. Government officials briefed on the Budget preparations said Sunak had looked at reducing the 5% VAT, but no decisions had been taken yet, the newspaper Continue Reading

Bitcoin expert Max Keiser has said that the Bank of England (BoE) will be scrambling to acquire Bitcoin before the asset trades at $1 million.  Keiser notes that the potential adoption of Bitcoin by the BoE is part of the broader notion that the asset has ‘killed’ central banks, Express.co.uk reports. He Continue Reading

BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest money manager, voted against a resolution calling for Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to stop financing new fossil fuel projects, it said late on Wednesday. CBA’s largest shareholder said it opposed the resolution, which also asked the bank to publish targets to cut its fossil fuel Continue Reading

Sterling rose against both the euro and the dollar after the Bank of England urged Britons, in interviews published over the weekend, to get ready for earlier interest rate rises as inflation pressure mounted in Britain. The bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said in an interview to The Yorkshire Post newspaper Continue Reading

Bank of England policymaker Michael Saunders told households to get ready for “significantly earlier” interest rate rises as inflation pressure mounts in the British economy, the Telegraph newspaper said on Saturday. Saunders said investors were right to bet on faster increases in borrowing costs with consumer price inflation heading above Continue Reading

They note that there is “heightened risk-taking in some financial markets” before elaborating on that as per the below: Financial markets play an important role in supporting the economy and provide a substantial amount of finance to businesses. If financial markets do not function properly, businesses may be unable to Continue Reading

British consumer morale fell to its lowest level since February, when the country was subject to severe COVID-19 restrictions, owing to concerns about the economy’s prospects and rising costs, according to a BoA report. The survey chimed with other measures of consumer confidence in Britain, which indicated that a growing Continue Reading

Pfizer Inc  will study the effectiveness of its vaccine against COVID-19 by inoculating the whole population over the age of 12 in a town in southern Brazil, the company said on Wednesday. The study will be conducted in Toledo, population 143,000, in the west of Parana state, together with Brazil’s National Continue Reading

Positive clinical trial results for Merck & Co’s MRK experimental antiviral COVID-19 pill reverberated through the healthcare sector on Friday, sending the drugmaker’s stock price soaring while denting high-flying shares of vaccine companies and makers of other coronavirus therapies. Merck shares jumped as much as 12.3% and hit their highest level since Continue Reading

British factories in September suffered their weakest month since February when the country was still largely locked down, according to a survey which underscored the impact of supply chain problems and staff shortages for manufacturers. The IHS Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell for a fourth month in a Continue Reading