The U.K.’s second- biggest bank Barclays Plc have announced that they are to acquire Standard Life Plc’s banking assets for a sum of £226 million pounds, In a move designed to expand their UK based savings and mortgage operations, Barclays will receive a major boost in turnover through Standard Life Bank Plc, who currently hold around £ 5.5 billion in deposits as we’ll as £8.8 billion in mortgages. A spokesman for Barclays announced the bank’s intention to continue to explore opportunities in the U.K. retail long term savings and investments industry, working in conjunction with Standard Life, who are the U.K.’s third-biggest insurer.

The bank is seeking to increase revenue at its consumer and corporate-banking division, whilst reducing their reliance on investment banking. The acquisition follows that of the Portuguese credit-card business of Citibank International Plc made last month. Barclays continue to seek more acquisitions in Europe.

Production of new cars in the UK fell by 16.1 percent for the year in September, making for the smallest decline for 12 months, according to figures issued by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. 119,616 cars were made in Britain last month, making for an annual total of 694,769, down by 41.2 percent on the same period in 2008. Sales have been boosted by the government’s car scrappage scheme, which allows motorists to trade in cars that are more than 10 years old in return for a 2,000 pound subsidy on a new vehicle.

Oil giant BP has reported third-quarter profits of £2 billion ($4.98 billion) well ahead of analyst’s expectations

BP’s results, boosted by higher than expected cost cuts, was still down by

50% from last year. This is largely due to the fact that oil is currently trading at about $80 a barrel, about half of where it was this time last year. The announcement sent BP’s share price up by almost 4%.

The British Standards Institute (BSI) the national standards body are reportedly deep in the process of developing a voluntary standard of ‘kitemarks’ that will be issued to retail and wholesale financial services firms.

The BSI have been consulting with members of the industry in order to set out a common methodology and good practice standard, which can be implemented alongside existing regulations, with the goal of reducing risks of compliance failures whilst offering greater reassurance to management that regulatory requirements are being met. The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) are apparently offering their whole hearted support for the scheme, with their chief executive quoted as saying that the initiative should improve efficiencies between and amongst compliance teams across the financial service industry .

Sterling continued to rise in value yesterday against the dollar, while falling against the Euro.

• Pound/US dollar 1.6351
• Pound/Euro 1.1043
• Pound/Japanese Yen 149.0922
• Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6709

Shares in the Anglo-Dutch publishing group Reed Elsevier, were very much in demand on Tuesday, rising 3.3 per cent to 473 pence after the market deduced that concerns over the trading performance of, it’s content archive service division, Lexis-Nexis, had been exaggerated.

Banks didn’t have such a good day on the FTSE, especially the partially nationalised ones. Royal Bank of Scotland were down 8.1 per cent to 40.8 pence while Lloyds Banking Group, also fell 6.1 per cent to 83.8 pence. The reason for their downfall was investor fears regarding the disposals that both banks will be obliged to make in order to satisfy European Commission rules on state aid.

The FTSE 100 made a minor recovery on trading Tuesday, up just 9.23 points to close on 5200.97. The FTSE 250 continued to lose value, yesterday down 44.82 points to close on 9141.28.

Fears about future job prospects was stated as the principal reason why US consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in October. The Important Consumer Confidence Index from the Conference Board business organisation slipped to 47.7 in October from a revised 53.4 in September. Analysts were caught unawares by the decrease, with expectations that the index would remain unchanged or might even rise slightly.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones hiccupped a little into forward gear, up a mere 14.21 points to 9882.18. The NASDAQ Composite index was still dropping yesterday, a further 25.76 points to 2116.09.

According to the European Central Bank, lending to companies operating in the eurozone fell in September at an annual rate of 0.3%, compared with a modest annual growth of 0.1% in August. The fall is a source of concern for the Eurozone countries is it comes when European governments continue to bolster their economies by increased lending at very low, subsidised interest rates.

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