The highly rated “Which?” Award for Best Financial Services Provider, has gone to none other than the Co-operative Bank.

Despite the recession, the bank has continued to perform well with its client base increasing significantly in recent years, largely due to their ethical investment policy.
Since 1992, the bank’s commercial lending has grown from £571 million to £4.4 billion in 2008 – an average 14% per year growth.

According to a company spokesman “The Bank’s Ethical Policy has led to more than £1 billion in unethical business being declined, but it has also contributed to a massive £3.8 billion net growth in our corporate lending” Which obviously agrees.

U.K. Business Secretary Peter Mandelson announced yesterday that the U.K. Financial Services Authority must be allowed to retain control of both prudential and business conduct supervision despite the risk that it may cause an argument with the Bank of England who seek to have a more “direct role” in financial stability issues. Mandelson made the statement during a speech to the British Banking Association on Monday.

A rush for floral dresses and “boyfriend blazers” has helped online fashion retailer Asos to almost double their pre-tax profits in the year ending March 31. Since the onset of the financial crisis, the group has outperformed its high street rivals, luring young shoppers online with more than 800 clothing brands. However the company reports that slowing UK sales growth has prompted Asos to increasingly turn their attention towards international expansion.

Meanwhile that bastion of the UK high street, Marks & Spencer is expected reveal improved trading this week as more benign market conditions feed in to its sales figures. A strong showing at Easter and the recent positive turn in the weather are expected to contribute to a marked improvement in sales, compared to the final quarter of 2008.

In a move best described nobler than astute, food supplier Uniq have announced the sale of their profit making subsidiary based in France in order to focus on their UK operation which is losing money.

Uniq’s French company, which produces chilled and frozen convenience foods, is to be sold poultry and delicatessen group LDC for £62 million. £25 million of that sum will be set aside by Uniq to reduce its UK debts, with the balance going towards pension deficit reduction and some investment. Uniq, a fairly major supplier to Marks & Spencer among others, posted an operating loss of £3.3 million for 2008.

On the stock exchanges, National Express added 9.8 percent to close on 302.75 pence, after the FirstGroup announced that their preliminary acquisition approach to the board of National Express was rejected.

Shares in Lloyds Banking gained 6.1 percent to 70.56 pence after analysts predicted that the lender will be a “key beneficiary” of higher market share concentration in the U.K. Royal Bank of Scotland gained 2.3 per cent to 39 pence while Barclays was up 4.3 per cent to 279.65 pence apparently aided by renewed speculation that the UK are to announce a new “bad bank” scheme to buy up toxic loans.

U.K. financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown Plc also enjoyed a good day with shares up 4.5 percent, to 210 pence on the announcement that they expect full-year pretax profit to be “slightly ahead” of market estimates, boosted by higher stock broking volumes and the rising markets.

Defence contractor Cobham was up 1.8 per cent to 175.6 pence after they announced that their joint venture with Northrop Grumman had been awarded a US intercom order estimated to be worth around £ 1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) over the next ten years.

The FTSE 100 began the week positively, rising by 53.02 points to 4,294.03.
The FTSE 250 also climbed for another day, this time by 90.95 points to reach 7,477.21

After a period of falls and rises, Sterling kicked off this the week on the up against all the other major currencies.

Pound/US dollar 1.6645
Pound/Euro 1.793
Pound/Japanese Yen 159.2436
Pound/Swiss Franc 1.7978

The worst recession in decades will curtail oil demand for years to come, according to a prediction from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The Agency has sharply reduced their forecasts for world consumption and declared that the threat of a supply crunch had receded.

In their role as the consuming countries’ oil watchdog the IEA announced their expectations that global demand will grow by an average annual rate of just 0.6 per cent or 540,000 barrels a day till 2014.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones finished the day up 90.99 points to 8529.4, while the NASDAQ rose just a little, 5.84 points to close on 1844.06. The State of California is preparing to issue IOUs to its creditors this week as it grapples with an unprecedented cash crunch and prepares to begin its new fiscal year deep in the red.
Once the US’s richest state, California now has the dubious distinction of having the worst credit rating in the country.

Now the sunshine states are facing a budget deficit of £14.5 billion yet Arnold Schwarzenegger, its governor, and the state assembly cannot agree on a budget that would address California’s record shortfall. Anyone surprised?

In New York, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was shown no mercy by the courts, being handed down the maximum prison sentence of 150 years for masterminding his £40 billion fraud, a world record that will never be broken. Madoff’s lawyer, obviously an optimist, had sought a more lenient sentence of 12 years,

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Tags: Bank, Best Financial Services Provider, Co-operative Bank, Economy, Financial News, Recession, UK Banks