FCA’s first deputy CEO calls for stronger grip on vital tech firms

The City watchdog has said the UK needs to “strengthen” its grip on foreign tech firms providing critical services to banks, amid growing concerns over outages and cyber-attacks.Sarah Pritchard, who was appointed the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) first deputy chief executive this summer, said there had been “very frequent reminders” of how important it was for the banking sector to have “good, strong operational resilience and cyber controls”.“It remains an area that everybody should pay attention to because of the consequences if it goes wrong,” Pritchard said.Last month, Lloyds Banking Group and the London Stock Exchange were among more than 2,000 companies whose online services were disrupted by a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing services operations in North Virginia.The episode sparked renewed warnings over the perils of relying on a small number of foreign companies for operating services across the internet, including crucial government and financial services

Asking prices fall as UK housing market hit by budget speculation, Rightmove says

Budget speculation has depressed the UK property market, figures from a leading property website have suggested, with asking prices slipping in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s much anticipated fiscal set piece on 26 November.The average new seller asking price fell by 1.8%, or £6,589, month on month in November, the figures collated by the property website Rightmove set out, taking the average price tag on a British home put up for sale to £364,833.The data has emerged as the chancellor has come under pressure to reform property taxes, with housing market experts including the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp saying “people are in a panic” about potential stamp duty changes, and “sitting tight” before the budget.It is fairly common for prices to fall month on month in November, when the average monthly price drop has been 1

Joe Rigby obituary

My father, Joe Rigby, who has died aged 87, was a working-class Catholic boy from Birmingham. He left school at 15, but rose to be a television executive at Granada Television in Manchester.For 20 years from 1973, he was Granada’s head of programme planning, where he hired, inspired and nurtured the team of scriptwriters who wrote the on-air promotions for programmes. Many of them, including Andy Harries, David Liddiment and Dearbhla Walsh, went on to great success as television producers and directors.Joe was born in Erdington, north of the city centre, to Theresa (nee Byrne) and Charles Rigby, who worked in the family engineering company and as a barman

Merchants’ ‘victory’ over credit card fees will just complicate things more for them

Want to buy a new shirt from your friendly neighborhood small business? In some cases, be prepared to pay out 2.5% more as a “financing” fee because you’re using a credit card. Enjoying that meal at the local diner? Better have cash or you could be subject to the same fee. Grabbing a bag of chips and a soda at the local convenience store? Oops … Unless you’re prepared to spend a minimum of 10 bucks you can’t use your credit card, sorry.I’ve always been irritated by these practices

UK watchdogs need to step in on rip-off bills, which are bad for consumers and the economy | Heather Stewart

Ever felt swizzed by the small print in your mobile contract, bamboozled by a plethora of insurance products or locked into a subscription you signed up for by mistake?Then you are far from alone: a paper on the UK’s productivity predicament suggests the way the markets for some key services work is not only a monumental pain for consumers but bad for the economy, too.Rachel Reeves has promised to tackle the cost of living in her 26 November budget – alongside bringing in tax rises.Briefing in advance has suggested she and her colleagues are focused on cost-cutting levers they can easily pull from Whitehall: removing VAT on energy bills, for example.However, in their paper “getting Britain out of the hole”, the economists Andrew Sissons and John Springford suggest a much more muscular approach to making markets for key services work better.They argue that lack of proper competition for services is an important explanation for the UK’s frustratingly “sticky” inflation

‘I think the city is falling apart’: Leicester braces for a make-or-break budget

Anika* has a full-time job, but says she never eats in local cafes or restaurants and takes her lunch to work. The cost of living is too high for her to buy more than the basics of life.“Everything is so expensive. I cry, and ask myself what more can I do to make things better,” she says.The charity worker lives in Leicester, the local authority where people have the least spare cash after paying taxes, property ownership costs and pensions contributions