Month: December 2012

When you look ahead to 2013, your glass could be half full or half empty. In the UK the lights have just gone out in the last Comet store. And yet Nissan are pumping £250m into Sunderland to build a luxury small car and create hundreds of jobs. The employment data in the US has...

The results of research conducted recently for Baring Asset Management, suggest that almost half the working population of the UK (45%) have never reviewed their pension plans. Among those people who had reviewed their pension plans, 41% were unable to say whether they had selected the ‘default’ option offered by their pension provider. More than a...

Introduction It was a sign of the times that the first official word on George Osborne’s Autumn Statement was a tweet from his boss. David Cameron told his 178,514 followers on Twitter: We are on the right track and making progress. His previous tweet had intimated that the Chancellor would announce further investment in education,...

Technically, the United Kingdom is now out of recession. But every family will tell you that times remain tough. Even at the top end of the pay scale, the ending of child allowance early in 2013 will mean that a lot of people have far less disposable income. With no sign of the economic good...

Providers of tax-advantaged products, like personal pensions, give people taking out a product an indication of possible future returns based on their pension fund growing by five, seven and nine per cent, after taking into account the impact of charges. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) sets the projection rates, which are used to estimate how...

Despite the fact that it is more than ten years since the FTSE-100 index was at its all time high, the last decade has presented plenty of opportunities to make money by buying and selling shares. Many of our clients are actively interested in the stock market. We’ve therefore put together what we hope are some useful...

It seems some time ago now, but on Tuesday November 6th Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney to secure the White House for another four years. World stock markets had risen throughout the day, anticipating his victory. Unfortunately the next day the President ran up against the still-Republican-dominated Congress – and with the US heading for...