Search: financial focus

Iberdrola chairman Ignacio Galán Scottish Power expects to pay a £150 million carbon tax bill this year, prompting Spanish owner Iberdrola to complain about the tax's impact on fuel prices.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is facing a massive $13 billion (£8.3bn) penalty after the US government demanded the cash to settle claims that the Edinburgh-based lender deceived purchasers of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) prior to its £45 billion taxpayer bailout. The UK taxpayer still owns 79pc

Ed Molyneux Scottish cloud accounting provider FreeAgent has launched a £1 million crowdfunding drive to accelerate its vision of "Democratising Accounting" for UK micro-businesses and freelancers.

Katherine Garret-Cox Alliance Trust chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox has claimed that her £1.3m wage is only questioned by her critics because she is a woman.

The next two years could see Britain’s biggest banks hit with up to another £19 billion of charges relating to past misconduct, according to Standard & Poor’s (S&P). In a new report, the ratings agency said Britain’s banks and customer-owned lenders had incurred £48 billion in miscon

The Council of Mortgage Lenders has reported gross mortgage lending reached £16.5 billion in March - a 12 per cent decrease from the last three months of 2014, and a 3 per cent decrease on the first quarter of 2014. The figure was 21 per cent higher than February (£13.6 billion), and 7 per cent hi

Aileen Scott The UK is inhibiting its economy with a tax burden 18 per cent heavier than the global average, and should consider setting a specific target for overall tax take, according to Scottish accountancy firm Campbell Dallas.

The UK government has, over the past year, taken a notably more deliberate approach to mobilising private capital and philanthropy for social good, writes Mark McKeown. From a Scottish perspective, however, it exposes a familiar fault line in UK policy. Devolution means that, in its current form, th

With pensions being brought into estates in a year’s time, savers are being warned not to stop or reduce their contributions to "the best way of building long-term wealth" just to avoid a potential inheritance tax bill. New figures from Murphy Wealth suggest that contributing to a pension coul

Edinburgh’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the least confident of Scotland’s major cities as business viability concerns remain high nationwide, according to new research from Aberdein Considine LLP.  Capturing the views of Scottish SMEs in the run-up to the Holyrood

Royal Bank of Scotland-owner NatWest Group has appointed Kevin Havelock as mid-market champion for Scotland. The appointment comes as the group has appointed a total of 12 mid-market champions across UK nations and regions, part of its "growing together" plan to drive UK wide growth by supporting re

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has stressed that the fight against fraud must continue as its annual detected fraud data reveals that £1.16 billion worth of fraudulent general insurance claims were identified in 2024 – a 2% increase on the £1.14bn detected the previous y

Fraud now accounts for an estimated 41% of all crime against individuals in England and Wales, according to the National Crime Agency, and in response, a multi-agency initiative is now being rolled out to take greater action to protect the public, following a successful pilot programme led by C

Harper Macleod has recorded turnover of £43.5 million for the year to 31 March 2025, an increase of nearly 20% compared to the previous 12 months (£36.5m).  Headcount across its five offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Elgin and Lerwick also increased to 466 from 446 in the pr

Scotland has secured 135 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in 2024 and cemented its reputation as the top UK FDI location outside London after marking a decade in the position. Despite a drop of seven projects (-4.9%) on the year before, this is still the second highest annual number of proje