Date:-14-Dec-2009

UK Economic News

Both Lloyds bank and RBS are on track to meet mortgage commitments ...because demand is there...but will fall short on the corporate lending front...because demand isn't....

Google has confirmed that it is in exploratory talks with UK estate agents to launch a property website , a situation which will certainly worry Rightmove and Hometrack

New UK car registrations shot up by 57.6% in November year on year following a healthy 31.6% annual rise in October . Approximately 21% of the total sold was as a result of the car scrappage scheme, which means the underlying annual improvement in car sales was 27.6%, which demonstrates firstly how bad they were last year and secondly how important is the availability of finance. The recovery can now be described as well underway.

The CB Richard Ellis report on office rents shows those in the West End, London falling by 26% over the last year. Worldwide rents fell by an average of 7.7% over 179 markets with Singapore the worst affected, down approximately 53%. In Manhattan rents fell around 30%. Some 130 of the cities surveyed experienced declines.

3 month Sterling LIBOR has been steady at 0.53%, down from the 0.54% level which held for the last few weeks.

Source: The Times, Economist, Financial Times