Restrictions put in place by the financial institutions to make the business of borrowing money may have been eased slightly, but too late in many cases to help the many businesses that demanded help a year or more ago.

The government’s may have saved the high street banks, but in doing so left many business of all sizes having to fend for themselves. The results of this are still clear to see with news of job losses around the whole of Europe almost on a daily basis.

The fact is that none of us are safe from the constant talk of job losses and redundancies and many have already adjusted to living on a more frugal budget as they do not know if they will be next.

There are many amongst us who use our credit cards on a daily basis and have built up a balance that is becoming a struggle to deal with. In the past it was easy to transfer outstanding balances to another card offering zero interest for a given period, giving some reprieve to the borrower who could make plans to clear the debt without incurring further charges.

These zero percent offerings are almost a thing of the past in today’s climate, but there are still some low APR credit card offers around. The Republic of Ireland’s third largest credit card provider MBNA  for instance are currently offering zero per cent on transfers to their Platinum Card for a period of the first ten months.

The Platinum card is one of a range of credit cards that are acceptable in over 29 million retail outlets and 1.2 million ATMs around the world, making it one of the best credit card deals in Ireland right now.

the co-op

Mutual retailer, the Co-operative Group has today announced that it is prepared to fight like for like with the UK’s top supermarket chains for a share of the public festive season spend, by introducing price cuts and savings that they say are worth £200 million customers.

As the silly season is practically upon us the Co-op has stepped out of the shadows of some of its bigger rivals following recent proposals from Tesco to offer customers savings of £250 million over the Christmas period and rival Asda predicting the most competitive Christmas for a decade.

As well as cutting prices Co-op has another string to its bow for customers by including their first ever triple dividend payment.

Normally Co-op members earn one point for every pound spent in food stores and each year the value of a membership point is determined by how much profit the group makes.

For the last annual payment, the value of a point was set at 2 pence. On this basis, a triple dividend would be worth 6 pence in the pound.

The actual figure from the Insolvency Service recorded 35,242 people in England and Wales were declared insolvent, a 28% increase on the same period last year.

It represents the highest figure since records began in 1960 and there appears to be no let up as figures will only rise as unemployment continues to increase.

Anthony Cork, director at accountants Wilkins Kennedy, said;

“Those who have already suffered job losses are just beginning to be represented in these figures but there are many more behind them who are still battling to weather the storm.  Historically unemployment has continued to rise even as the economy begins to recover, and this means that personal insolvencies can only soar even further. Things are likely to become very bloody indeed.”

Some good news is that company insolvencies fell by almost 10% in the period, with 1,300 businesses suffering compulsory liquidation, with a further 1,578 in the first stages of the winding up process.

With the current state of the economy it would not be a surprise to see the figures reach even higher levels in the new year as many businesses and individuals over stretch themselves in the Christmas period.

traditional pawnbroker sign

The UK’s biggest pawnbroker, H&T which has over 120 branches across the country has said the business is trading well ahead of expectations as cash strapped Britons continue to trade in their valuables for cash.

H&T have opened 56 new outlets in shopping centres across the UK over the last year, recognising the growing recession fuelled surge in demand for their services. The company are planning a further twelve shops in the coming months.

The pawnbroker chain deals almost exclusively in gold and diamond set jewellery and say they have ‘benefited considerably’ since June 2009 with higher Gold purchasing volumes.

H&T which started out in 1897 as Harvey & Thompson with a shop in London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road, says that the current trend may not be sustainable and has therefore taken premises on short term leasing.

The number of pawn broker outlets in the UK has risen by 25% to over a 1,000 in the last five years.

While money and finance are still among the most popular areas that visitors are looking at to make savings, the MoneySupermarket site offers a whole lot more with listings for insurance products, utilities and all the best deals for electrical items such as the latest Playstation 3 Slim.

The people at MoneySupermarket are interested to know what people do with the money they have saved after visiting the website and have launched a competition challenging customers to make a short video to demonstrate how they spent the savings they made.

As an example, watch the video to see how one customer chose to use the money that she had saved by buying her pet dog Benson a Batman outfit!

The competition is called Let’s Have The Savings and the video that receives the most views will win a cash prize of £500. Entry is free and details can be found at Let’s Have The Savings, where you will also find the posts of the latest video entries.

It is all a bit of fun, so if you can make a funny video using the strapline ‘Let’s Have The Savings’ you will be in with a chance of the £500 prize money.

Sainsbury currently leads the way with the announcement that it will create 2,300 new jobs in the north of England and Scotland by the summer of 2010. The third biggest UK supermarket group now says it is expecting to create around 20,000 seasonal jobs over Christmas and the New Year.

The figure represents a huge increase on the 12,000 seasonal workers that Sainsbury employed last year and is the biggest such hiring campaign that the company has conducted. The company expects to retain at least 1,000 of the temporary staff on a full time basis.

Tesco recently announced that it would be creating 800 jobs when it expands it’s Financial Service division in Scotland and Morrisons said earlier this month that it too would be creating new vacancies this year with 7,000 new jobs- up 40% from it’s original target.

bovis homes group

The UK’s Bovis Home Group have seen an increase in reservations for new homes in the first half of the year, but still see no signs of stability in the housing market.

Private reservations increased by 92% during the period up to June 2009 compared to the same period last year, but still amounts to just 901 homes reserved. Private completions rose by 18% but was offset by decline in social housing completions.

Completed sales fell by 11% to 754 homes accompanied by a fall in net sales prices of 18% reducing turnover, margins and gross profits.

“Activity has to increase before we can start to think about the housing market in general becoming a more stable place,” says Bovis CEO David Ritchie, although the company are bouyant enough to go into the second half of the year looking for development land and expect to meet it’s full year volume targets of 1,800 units, ‘if activity continues at the same rate.’

“Firms are not saying that credit conditions are getting better, but the severity of the disruption is no longer worsening as sharply as it was three months ago,” said CBI chief economic adviser Ian McCafferty.

Despite the repeated cuts in the base rate over half of the companies surveyed said that the cost of borrowing had remained stable over the last three months, but 35% reported an increase in the cost of existing credit during the same period.

Sixty two percent of companies looking to take out new loans found that the cost had increased during the three months.

The Bank of England in their own report expects loans to be made more readily available to businesses and households, but warns of lending terms being stricter, while the CBI report concluded that companies are not expecting credit conditions to improve greatly during the next three months.

Three key members of the board have been suspended following the allegations, this follows last weeks news that another three members were suspended pending a ‘forensic review’ of the business.

Shares fell by 20% as Cattles when the company projected a significant loss for the most recent financial period and acknowledged that it would have to restate its financial statement for the year ending December 2007 when it recorded a 25% rise in pre tax profits.

Cattles had applied to the FSA in August for a banking licence to reduce the company UK Business dependency on the wholesale funding markets, but stricter requirements regarding liquidity have lead the company to withdraw the application. The company which thrived  in it’s early years when high street banks withdrew from unsecured lending is now struggling as many of it’s borrowers are unable to repay their loans.

AIG has already ended it’s partnership with the US Davis cup tennis team, and is in the process of restructuring it’s business, having received US government bail out funds of $150bn.

The insurance giant also has a £5m a year deal with Manchester United to run MU Finance, a six year deal was agreed with the club in 2008, to offer insurance, credit cards and mortgages through the MU Finance brand. It is unclear whether this agreement will be affected by the shirt sponsorship withdrawal.

Manchester United are already in talks with other potential business partners.