Business activity is at least trying to be buoyant in the UK; the rise and fluctuations in energy prices notwithstanding. The latest monthly Business Barometer of Lloyds TSB showed that profitability was high enough in the corporate sector to support the fact that business confidence was on the rise although reality may be a different matter.
Proportion of companies, which were predicting a rise in their activity, increased to 56 percent as against 44 percent in August. On the other hand, companies who were expecting no change in their business fortunes decreased from 44 to 36 percent during the same period. The overall ratio of companies sharing an optimistic outlook about the economy in UK rose from 43 to 48 percent.
These results according to Trevor Williams, chief economist, Lloyds TSB Financial Markets, "suggest the economy could be over the worst".
Meanwhile, financial services are also on the road to recovery. According to Financial Services Survey brought out by the CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers, this segment registered a sharp growth in the third quarterly. This report, which tracks indicators in financial services including banks, trading, funds, insurance companies and so forth, shows that 25 percent of the financial services companies’ added more employees, while 29 percent more are expected to do the same in the next quarter.
"The survey shows that the recovery in business activity is gathering pace across most parts of the financial services industry”, according to John Hitchins of PricewaterhouseCoopers UK.
Keith Skeoch, investment chief with Standard Life, who had earlier predicted a global recovery when the share prices came tumbling down after the 1987 stock market’s crash, saw a resurgence in the share market. In a statement from St. Petersburg in Russia, he said that shares rose taking natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, terrorist attacks in London along with the steep increase in oil prices stoically.
According to Mr Skeoch said that the UK equities returned more than 17 pence in the first nine months of 2005 as against 12 pence return on government bonds.
Posted
on : Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:35 GMT | Business News
By : Chris Rowe
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