The United Kingdom's electricity market, run through a combination of half-hourly trading, capacity markets and bilateral contracts, continues to exhibit an uncomfortable feature: the marginal unit dispatched to balance demand is often a gas-fired combined cycle plant. Under a merit-order system in which all …
The UK mortgage market has entered a phase in which headline rates are moving lower across a broad range of products. Following a bout of swap rate volatility earlier in the cycle, the major high street lenders and a swath of specialist providers have …
The annual ISA season, traditionally a peak period of retail investment activity as UK savers deploy their allowance before the tax year ends, delivered a notably soft performance for equity funds. Data from the Investment Association and from platform providers including Hargreaves Lansdown, Interactive …
The Help to Buy equity loan scheme, launched in 2013 and running in various forms through successive policy changes until its final cohorts completed in recent years, supported hundreds of thousands of purchases of new-build homes across England. At its peak, the scheme accounted …
HM Revenue and Customs has, over the past two years, substantially reshaped the balance of its enforcement activity. While headlines have focused on criminal fraud cases and the tax gap at the smaller end of the taxpayer population, the larger structural shift has been …
Turkey's monetary policy framework has been under sustained international scrutiny for the best part of a decade, with cycles of orthodox and unorthodox approaches creating persistent volatility in the lira, in inflation expectations and in the country's broader macroeconomic performance. The return to orthodox …
After more than a decade in which drawdown strategies dominated retirement planning discussions, the UK annuity market has returned to meaningful prominence. Sales volumes reported by the Association of British Insurers and by individual life insurers, including Legal and General, Aviva, Canada Life, Scottish …
The artificial intelligence capex cycle has driven one of the most concentrated equity rallies in recent memory, with a handful of US mega-cap technology companies accounting for a disproportionate share of index returns. For investors, the dilemma is familiar. Participate, and risk exposure to …
The stretch of London bound by the Thames from Battersea through Vauxhall, Nine Elms, the South Bank, Canary Wharf and out to Greenwich has absorbed more new housing units over the past fifteen years than almost any comparable urban corridor in Europe. The result …
Private credit, which has grown into one of the most substantial alternative asset classes globally, is reaching a pivotal moment. The sector has expanded dramatically over the past fifteen years, with total assets under management now measured in trillions of dollars. The expansion has …