Jobs continue to vanish in the UK financial services industry

40% of UK’s financial services firms have reported that they are accumulatively liable to lay off around 15,000 staff during the coming quarter according to a recent survey conducted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). In the last quarter of 2008, the number of people employed in the financial services industry fell making it the fourth consecutive quarter that the numbers have been reduced.

The financial sector has been particularly hard hit during the financial downturn and has been cutting jobs at levels unknown since1993.

Transport has also been hard hot and with Jarvis the rail maintenance group announcing their intention to lay off 450 people, things don’t appear to be getting any better. Jarvis, who also issued a profits warning, stated that that a decline in business through Network Rail as well as the general downturn in freight container business were the principal factors in their decision to lay off people.

The government-backed operator Network Rail announced on Tuesday that they are to embark on a five year, £35 billion railway improvements programme. However it remains unclear when the project will begin and until it does Jarvis stand be limited in their operational capacity

US based car manufacture, General Motors; currently in President Obama’s bad books have remained undeterred. According to reports, company officials have approached the UK government requesting a £600m aid package to help Vauxhall their British brand to stay afloat

Company representatives confirmed that they were currently in discussions with the UK government, but have yet to get down to the “nitty gritty” as far as finance was concerned.

General Motors UK’s operations as well as others in have cut back on launching new models of late as well as introducing other cost saving methods.

Cost saving seems to be too late for Visteon UK, whose auto parts production unit announced that they will file for bankruptcy, making their entire workforce of around 600 redundant. The company, who were part of the Ford Motor group up until 2000, announced that since they became an autonomous body they had made accumulative losses of £669m. The Company operated three plants across the UK, situated in Basildon, Belfast and Enfield.

On the home front, it was reported that property owners have been pushing up their entity values, to record levels of just over eight billion pounds during the last three months of 2008.

The sum is the highest capital injection since gland records began in 1970; the 5.887 billion injected in the third quarter of 2008 fades in comparison. When property values were shooting thorough the roof in the boom years it was considered sound practice to refinance properties to free up capital. When the downturn began, too many people found themselves with negative equities. However the encouraging trend to increase equities appears to be gaining momentum.

Om a more negative note, key David Blanchflower Bank of England executive announced in a recent statement that the UK was still to bear the full brunt of rising unemployment.

On the stock market, the FTSE 250 index rose by 1.04% or 66.31 points to 6.440.20 while the FTSE 100 took a short drop finishing the session down 1.02 per cent, or 40.14 points, at 3,886

The pound continued to show modest gains against the euro and dollar on Wednesday Estimates were that, although results indicated an improvement and that the significant actions of the UK treasury were beginning to take effect, there was still a long way to go.

Pound/US dollar 1.4358

Pound/Euro 1.0835

Pound/Japanese Yen 141.68

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6378

Wall Street shares continued to rise and fall on a daily basis. Yesterday shares were up.

The Dow Jones Average rose 86.9 to close at 7608.92. Nasdaq trickled upward 26.79 points to 1528.59

The big news from Silicon Value in California was that Google the internet giant are about to move into the start-up business. To be more exact, the company, who currently turnover around $10 billion a year, have set aside a paltry $100m in its first year to compete against the top venture capital firms for some of investment opportunities afforded by the many start-up businesses in the region. Google’s new financing arm is to be known as Google Ventures.

In Asia the Japanese yen continued its four-week slump against the dollar with economists announcing that business sentiment has fallen to its lowest level for more than 30 years.

With expectations that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates tomorrow, the Euro is liable to also follow suit.

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Tags: Banking, British Economy, British Pound, Budget, Credit Crunch, Economics, Employment, Financial News