All posts tagged UK

Land Banking A Great Investment For Long Term Capital Growth

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Land banking, over the longer term, has shown better average gains than either shares or property, and with less downside risk, with an average UK growth of 920% in 20 years!

Once the preserve of rich, today, even smaller, in the know investors are taking advantage of this opportunity to make substantial capital gains.

Land Banking – What is it? Land banking simply involves the acquisition of land, which does not enjoy planning consent, in advance of expanding urbanization.

With the granting of planning consent, the price of an open space parcel, not yet subject to urban development pressures, normally rises in value.

Land Banking in the UK In 2004 alone, agricultural land in the UK appreciated in value between 16% and 30%, depending upon its geographical location.

In fact, over the past 20 years, the AVERAGE increase in UK Land has been a staggering 920%! In many instances, investors who have bought land in the right place at the right time have exceeded these average gains.

Not only has land risen in value dramatically, it has risen in a smoother upward path with less downside volatility than either stocks or property.

UK Demand Exceeding Supply The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe and has a rising population driven by a huge influx of migrants from overseas.

Two facts will illustrate the potential of land banking in the UK:

There is a need for up to 3,500,000 new homes over the next 15 years, rising to 4,400,000 new homes over the next 20 years.

Over the last 30 years, the demand for new homes has increased by 30%. In the same period, house-building rates have dropped by over 50%.

Supply must catch up with demand, and buying land in the UK therefore offers investors a great opportunity to make substantial capital gains.

Location is the Key! Under developed land, such as Greenbelt, agricultural and forestry, is cheaper than land that currently enjoys planning consent. The way to make big capital gains in land banking, involves buying land in specific areas in the hope of future development.

Pre-planning purchase of green belt, agricultural and forestry land is nothing new. Astute investors have been doing it for years.

Investors simply need to study specific areas for the likelihood of future planning permission being granted, which will lead to an increase in the value of the plot purchased.

How to Make Big Land Banking Capital Gains Every developer knows that each town and city must grow outward, and the land most available is agricultural, greenbelt and forestry.

Land without planning permission which is subsequently included in a local authority’s unitary development plan (UDP), will potentially benefit from a significant increase in value.

With the granting of a change of use, a site’s value can increase substantially. However, the change of use category granted, i.e. residential, commercial recreational etc, will ultimately dictate the change in value of the plot.

Land Banking Risks Any investor considering land banking needs to give careful consideration to site selection, and purchase sites which are within the path of progress and future urbanization, but also have a high probability of future development.

Land Banking is a long-term investment, as resale durations and amounts are variable.

Taking Advantage of the Land Banking Opportunity There are many specialist companies catering for international investors wishing to own UK land. An investment in land can be cheap, as many developers buy plots, divide them, and sell them in smaller parcels.

Compliance Risk Lesson From Emilio Botin Abbey Santander Banking Group

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The importance of compliance with legal, regulatory, social, ethical and other standards faced by businesses is highlighted by the high-profile UK legal case Chagger v Abbey National plc & Hopkins (2006), where an Employment Tribunal made a ruling of racial discrimination and, following Emilio Botin Abbey Santander banking group’s refusal to comply with the Tribunal’s order to reinstate Mr Chagger, ordered Abbey Santander shares to pay the record-breaking 2.8 million compensation award. Abbey Santander Group (the UK bank soon to be re-branded as Santander shares price, and being a part of the behemoth Emilio Botin Banco Santander Central Hispano Group – BSCH) dismissed Balbinder Chagger from employment in 2006, asserting compulsory redundancy as the reason. Mr Chagger, on the other hand, believed that the actual reason behind the termination of his employment was race discrimination. Mr Chagger was of Indian origin. He worked for Emilio Botin Abbey Santander price in the role of Trading Risk Controller. He earned approximately 100,000 per annum. He reported into Nigel Hopkins.

In the UK, the Financial Services sector is highly regulated. Financial institutions face an abundance of standards to comply with concerning their numerous stakeholders (regulators, authorities, the public, employees, customers, suppliers, competitors, shareholders, investors, and others). Compliance with all of the standards is part and parcel of conducting business in the UK Financial Services sector; financial institutions need to devote sufficient resources and energies to compliance and to compliance risk management. Compliance failures, that are either detected by regulators during inspections or reported by aggrieved parties to the appropriate jurisdictions, can result in extremely high-profile consequences, as shown by Chagger v Abbey National & Hopkins (2006); the Employment Tribunal recorded an abundance of compliance issues and failures committed by Emilio Botin Santander Abbey and Mr Hopkins, some of which are outlined below.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had failed to comply with the UK statutory redundancy dismissal procedure; it had failed to notify Mr Chagger in writing of the circumstances leading it to contemplate dismissing him and asking him to a meeting.

Emilio Botin Abbey Grupo Santander had failed to comply with the guidance on good practices regarding Equal Opportunity training recommended by the UK statutory Code of Practice on Racial Policy in Employment. Mr Chagger had made efforts to address the issues surrounding his dismissal directly with Santander Abbey and Mr Hopkins, through the company’s grievance and appeals procedures. However, Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had not provided any Equal Opportunity training to the managers it had allocated to consider Mr Chagger’s issues; Mr Chagger’s issues were simply dismissed out of hand by each and every manager. Emilio Botin Abbey Santander banking group had also failed to comply with the guidance on good practices concerning monitoring recommended by the UK statutory Code of Practice on Racial Policy in Employment. The Tribunal found an abundance of monitoring failures, in addition to the failures to give serious consideration to allegations of race discrimination and to investigate them promptly.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had failed to comply with the Tribunal’s order to reinstate Mr Chagger (ordered to remedy the unlawful wrongful act of racial discrimination committed by Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins). In the UK, reinstatement is regarded as the primary and preferred remedy for an unfair dismissal, because it enables the aggrieved employee to continue to enjoy both the mental satisfaction and the economic benefits of his role in the future. Emilio Botin Abbey Santander refused to reinstate Mr Chagger and the Employment Tribunal was dissatisfied with the reasons it gave for refusing to comply.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had failed to comply with the Race Relations Act (Questions and Replies) Order 1977. The Tribunal found that Emilio Botin Abbey Santander’s reply to Mr Chagger’s race discrimination questionnaire was evasive, and that Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had failed in answering Mr Chagger’s questions.

Both Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins had failed to comply with UK law on employment. The Employment Rights Act 1996 requires the selection of an employee for dismissal in a compulsory redundancy situation to be fair. Compulsory redundancy selection criteria must be applied fairly; they must be both objective and measurable. The Employment Tribunal found, however, that the compulsory redundancy selection criteria Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had applied were both highly subjective and un-measurable.

Mr Hopkins had failed to comply with the expected behaviours of a reasonable manager. He was highly criticised by the Employment Tribunal for the manner in which he had applied the compulsory redundancy selection criteria to Mr Chagger. As an example, the Employment Tribunal found that he had scored Mr Chagger down for getting on with work and being self-reliant, a characteristic that the Tribunal thought that reasonable managers might well consider to be an asset for an employee in Mr Chagger’s highly paid and highly responsible position, and score him more highly for.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander had failed to comply with reasonable good practices and safeguard controls expected in compulsory redundancy situations; that of ensuring more than one manager is involved in the assessing and scoring of each of the employees in the redundancy pool (a control to safeguard the fairness of the scoring and to reduce the risks of bias). The Tribunal found, however, that Emilio Botin Abbey Santander did not implement this simple control mechanism. Alongside other significant factors, Mr Hopkins was single-handedly able to recommend to Abbey Santander’s management to dismiss one of the two Trading Risk Controllers that he managed (Mr Chagger being one), was single-handedly able to put to Mr Chagger an offer to take up voluntary redundancy (Mr Chagger refused Mr Hopkins offer, and no such offer was ever put to the other Trading Risk Controller), was single-handedly able to conduct the compulsory redundancy scoring and assessment of the two employees in the redundancy pool, and was single-handedly able to reduce Mr Chagger’s scores to ensure that he would be the employee who would be selected for dismissal.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins both had failed to comply with the UK discrimination law; the Tribunal ruled that they had both racially discriminated against Mr Chagger.

Emilio Botin Abbey Santander highlights the significance of compliance risk and its potentially very high-profile consequences on an institution’s reputation. The profile continued beyond the Employment Tribunal stage for Abbey Santander. Mr Hopkins and Emilio Botin Abbey Santander s appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) against the original Employment Tribunal’s ruling of racial discrimination and against the record-breaking 2.8 million compensation award. In 2008, the EAT upheld the original Tribunal’s ruling that both Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins had racially discriminated against Mr Chagger. However, the EAT accepted Abbey Santander’s appeal on the compensation award and remitted it to the original Tribunal for reconsideration. The case was appealed and escalated to the Court of Appeal (UK’s second highest court). The Court of Appeal’s List of Hearings showed the appeal was heard on 7/8 July 2009. The Court’s transcript of the hearing and judgement were not available when writing this article. The 11KBW set of barristers’ chambers, who represented Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins, had reported that the Court of Appeal hearing was to be about compensation only (i.e., not about racial discrimination also). That would appear to imply that the wrongful act of race discrimination committed by Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Nigel Hopkins was finalised by the EAT when it upheld the original Tribunal’s decision that Emilio Botin Abbey Santander and Mr Hopkins had racially discriminated against Mr Chagger, and that Mr Chagger had appealed against the EAT’s decision to remit the compensation award to the Employment Tribunal stage for reconsideration.

Top banking management good tips

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Your code is composed of numbers and letters issued by the HM Income and Customs (HMRC) to your employer. It is applied to establish the correct quantity of salary tax that your employer will deduct from your salary every thirty day period. Some tax codes would appear like these: 434L, 323P, 456V, K345, DO, NT, BR, and OT.

What do the quantities mean?an?

The numbers represent your tax allowance or the total sum authorized to be deducted from your whole earnings for the 12 months. Your tax allowance is derived by working with the following formula:

Tax allowance = Number X ten + 9

To illustrate, a code of 434L usually means that you are entitled to a tax allowance of four,349 that can be deducted from your revenue for the 12 months to arrive at your taxable salary. Hence, if you have earned thirty,000 for the year, your revenue that is topic to tax would be twenty five,651.

What do the letters mean?

The letters show specified circumstances why you have to spend specified amounts that are distinct from what others are spending. Let us consider a appearance at some of the letters and what they mean:

L – This is the most common code that refers to simple personal allowances.

P – This applies to folks with ages between 65 and 74 who are eligible for complete private allowances.

Y – This is for men and women who are extra than 75 a long time previous and qualified for full exclusive allowances.

K – This implies that the volume of allowances is less than the quantity of deductions.

T – This signifies that there are factors that need to have to be reviewed by the suitable Inspector of Taxes.

BR – This stands for basic rate and this means that your total salary will be subject to the standard tax pace for the existing yr but you will not be entitled to particular allowances.

NT – This is utilised when no volume is to be deducted from your earnings or pension.

D0 – This signifies that you have to pay out at a higher pace like forty% since of a 2nd work or pension.

D1 – This signifies that you have to shell out at a bigger fee like fifty% for several earnings or pension.

Essentially every citizen in the Uk is qualified for a individual allowance, which entitles them to a corresponding tax cost-free revenue. Earnings previously mentioned the tax cost-free cash flow are subject matter to the simple tax price up to a selected limit when higher earnings are subject to higher taxes according to the cash flow brackets set by the HMRC. As a result, knowing how your tax code as determined by HMRC is essential to be ready to know if the federal government is imposing the suitable quantity of evaluation on you.

Residence taxes could look like fixed expenses but they are significant things to consider for traders. A booming current market with mounting sale values pushes up assessors’ valuations of attributes. A slack market place, by contrast, could see home values fall. This has a immediate effect on the yearly tax evaluation, not only in the coming 12 months, but generally in the three several years subsequent the change in appeal. Taxes levied on a home will affect the return you see as an investor, and maybe your funding costs.

Introduction To Land Banking

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Land banking has proved to be one of the most prominent pockets of investment these days. It is seen as an effective method of creating personal wealth. Statistics reveal that about 20% of the people in the UK are land owners and they have reaped substantial benefits of land banking. Until recent times, it was tough to take advantage of the method, but things have changed for the better as this mode of investment has been made accessible to a wider audience. Simply speaking, land banking involves land acquisition which does not include planning consent for expanding urbanization. The price of an open plot of land that is not susceptible to the pressures of urban development. Once urban expansion starts to grow, the price of the land shoots up.

Why should you invest in Land?

Investing in land is a sure shot way to reap substantial capital gains. That is because there is hope for the value of the plot to increase in the future. Since the property is real, the land that is put up for sale is tangible, visible and can be visited and treaded over. It is a finite resource and the secret of success to invest in a plot of land is to purchase a plot in a place where it is scarce and the economy is developing. With the growing economy, there should also be a growth of population which will make the premium price of the land to expand at a rapid rate.

Banking in land is a cheap technique of investment as compares to other investment patterns like property. The value of land keeps increasing on a regular basis in a lot of countries as often demand exceeds supply. Moreover, certain tracts of land also gain the planning permission to permit construction.

Bank in Land to Maximize your Profits

If you are to make money by investing in land, you need to make the investment at the right plot of land, at the right place and at the most opportune moment. Land grows in value with every succeeding year and this is why it is a good idea to invest. Equity markets, bonds, banks, jewelry, foreign currencies etc have their highs and lows, but land prices continue to rise without ever slowing down. Moreover, with the populations rising, there is an acute shortage of housing caused by life expectancy, immigration and rise of nuclear homes. Changing planning policies also engender the boost for residential development.

Investment Banking Services To Simplify Wealth Management

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Sequoia Presidential Yacht is a field of banking that aids individuals, companies or governments in raising capital. In commercial banking, the institution collects deposits from clients and gives direct loans to businesses and individuals. Unlike commercial banks and retail banks, investment banks do not take deposits. From 1933 (Glass-Steagall Act) until 1999 (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), there remained a strict separation maintained involving the two varieties of banking within the United States. Since 1999 that practice has moved to a environment whereby commercial banks might also participate inside investment banking side. Other industrialized countries, including G8 countries, have historically not maintained this type of separation.

Would have to an analyst choose for the way to leave investment banking about the whole and a lot of attain their experience might be leveraged to consider into positions that will be normally require more experience. After all, many analysts wrack up double several from the average workforce and must be effective their work with an intensity level that’s truly one with the highest inside the company world.

So I may not expect everybody to sit down back and do nothing about it. I think that the actions were fairly justified. Now would this stay forever? We would have to watch and find out. Now if you look on the nature with the regulation which is happening, it is all around, making banks safer and also it’s around being sure that what banks can do with depositors money is limited to safer activities; meaning that you simply cant do some in the stuffs that got us into trouble in just a commercial bank, you therefore need different licence – a merchant banking licence.

Earlier, you talked about the central bank and AMCONs efforts in resolving the banking crisis. But since the crisis was resolved, there may be the insinuation that the Nigerian banking marketplace is over-regulated, when compared with its peers around the continent. Do you support such a view?

Many individuals don’t discover success off from the investment of 1 stock but from your successful portfolio which helps in diversifying their investments. When new traders invest solely in markets just like the Futures trading or Forex trading system theyre greatly restricting their potential of success and leaving no avenue outside of these investments inside the case your investment won’t produce the required results.

As second-year MBA students chatter at cocktail parties, one with the major topics of discussion is who landed investment banking offers. Although the reputation of investment banking has taken a beating following a 2008 economic crisis, corporate finance efforts are still a terrific way to achieve valuable business experience and earn a handsome paycheck.

During previous economic downturns the regular stance was that cash was king. If stock markets and property prices were choppy, simply keep your money inside bank. There was never any doubt on the safety of that money. However the entire world we are now living in has changed. As a UK saver you might be now only protected for 50k in each bank. If the bank goes under, you could lose money. A ridiculous notion 10 in the past but very realistic now. Indeed for all those who invested into Icesave a few of years back, they eventually got lucky and were repaid by the UK Government. The Treasury were convinced they’d be reimbursed by the Icelandic Government but the money never came. Such a future failure may now fall on deaf ears.

Understanding how these models work and also the theory behind them will help you answer a lot in the technical questions that may get thrown at you within an interview. Know the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and how to calculate the weighted average expense of capital (WACC). Know how to un-lever a beta.