RBS, Brexit, Pensions and Inheritance Tax

Royal Bank of Scotland secretly tried to profit from struggling businesses, leaked documents show.

The bank bought up assets cheaply from failing businesses it claimed to be helping, the confidential files reveal. Staff could boost their bonuses by finding firms which could be squeezed in what it called a ‘dash for cash’. RBS said it had let some small business customers down in the past but denied it deliberately caused them to fail. The cache of documents, passed by a whistleblower to BuzzFeed News and BBC Newsnight, support controversial allegations in a report three years ago by the Government’s then entrepreneur in residence Lawrence Tomlinson. Brexit The leader of Britain’s biggest business group has warned Theresa May that she risks ‘closing the door’ on an open economy with her immigration clampdown and Brexit policy. Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, issued the stark message in an interview with The Times as the Government climbed down on its plan to name businesses thought to be relying too heavily on foreign workers. Amid growing opposition to the proposal, outlined at the Tory conference last week, Justine Greening, the education secretary, said: ‘This is not data that will be published. There will be absolutely no naming and shaming.’ Pensions

Graduates could be forced to wait years longer than blue-collar workers to collect their state pension under controversial plans being considered by the Government.

Ministers are contemplating a ‘two-tier’ system, under which workers could only receive their state pension after around 45 years in work, according to the Daily Mail.

It means anyone going to university would face working until they are almost 70. Meanwhile those who leave school at 18 could be eligible to start drawing their state pension at 63.

In other pensions news, a rescue package for turkey firm Bernard Matthews means employee pensions will be hit, a report for a committee of MPs has said.

The Commons Work and Pensions Committee was told the deal had been structured ‘to extract maximum cash from the company and dump the pension scheme’. The firm was sold to food tycoon Ranjit Boparan in September. The new owners have previously given assurances to unions over pensions and job security.

Inheritance tax

The housing minister, Gavin Barwell, has suggested that parents should leave their houses and savings to their grandchildren rather than their children to help them get on the housing ladder. Barwell made the call for pensioners to skip a generation when writing their wills as he revealed that his 75-year-old mother had chosen to leave her £700,000 house in Croydon to her five grandchildren rather than himself and his brother. Property market The luxury property market in the UK is gradually recovering following the shock of Britain voting to leave the EU, according to one of the country’s leading property agents. The Guardian reports that Knight Frank said the number of exchanges agreed on homes worth more than £750,000 was down 20 per cent on last year since the referendum, while the value of commercial property sales in July and August was 47 per cent down on 2015. However, Alistair Elliott, the senior partner and chairman of Knight Frank, said the aftermath of the Brexit vote had been ‘less dramatic than feared’. Apple recently gave a major boost to the London property market by signing up for 500,000 sq ft of new office space at Battersea power station, while the number of prospective buyers registering their interest in prime residential property in the UK was higher in July and August than in 2015.

Spending

Household spending increased 2.4 per cent annually in September as people splashed out on meals and trips out to enjoy the late summer sun with economic concerns taking a ‘back seat’ according to a monthly index by Visa.

It said household spending showed ‘renewed signs of life’ last month after slowing during the run-up to the EU referendum in June.

Thisismoney reports that this followed a small 0.1 per cent annual rise in consumer spending recorded in August, which had marked the weakest growth seen in nearly three years according to the report by the global finance giant.

Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned that using World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules will mean higher prices in the shops.

In a letter to the trade secretary, the BRC warns reverting to WTO rules would see tariffs on clothes from Bangladesh of 12 per cent and those on meat of up to 27 per cent. Other items singled out by the BRC include Chilean wine, where the BRC says tariffs would rise by 14 per cent.

Exchange rate rip-off

Holidaymakers face ‘disgraceful’ exchange rate profiteering, experts warned as several airports offer less than a euro to the pound amid the financial volatility over Brexit. Martin Lewis, of MoneySavingExpert.com, launched a fierce attack on financial companies for taking advantage as one leading airport bought at 1.35 euros and sold at just 97 cents. Fraud

Royal Mail is accused of making millions from conmen who defraud the elderly on a massive scale. Vulnerable victims lose vast sums through letter frauds sent by post – delivered under Royal Mail’s bulk-mail contracts, the Daily Mail claims.

It means the fraudsters behind the illegal letters get Royal Mail branding on their envelopes, making it easier to gain the trust of victims. But despite repeated warnings about the scale of the fraud, the postal service refuses to crack down on the letters.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that men aged 65 living in metropolitan areas, who have more than £30,000 in savings, are the chief target for investment fraudsters, according to detailed profiling by the City of London police. Most victims are duped by ‘boiler rooms’, which use high-pressure tactics to sell shares to people who are persuaded that they are about to soar in value. Only later does the victim find that the shares are worthless and the sellers have disappeared. Figures released by Action Fraud and the City of London police show that 77 per cent of people reporting investment fraud are men, with an average age of 65. The average loss is more than £32,000 and most victims live in metropolitan areas.