News in brief

19 May 2025: HMRC ramps up raids in tax fraud crackdown; King Charles’s wealth swells to £640m; FCA finds 10% of Brits have no savings.

HMRC carried out an average of 12 property searches each week in the financial year 2024/25. The government tax body carried out 648 dawn raids, up from 623 raids in 2022/23. This follows Chancellor Rachel Reeve’s plans to raise over £1bn in additional gross tax revenue, which granted HMRC a £100m budget boost to bolster its workforce with 500 more compliance officers. In 2024, the tax gap stood at £5.5bn, which amounts to 0.7% of all taxes owed, City A.M reported.

King Charles’s personal fortune increased to £640m in the past year. This makes him as wealthy as the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty. The 76-year-old monarch recorded a £30m increase in wealth and ranks joint 238th on the Sunday Times’ list of the UK’s wealthiest people and families. He is estimated to be worth considerably more than the late Queen Elizabeth II, whose wealth was put at £370m in 2022, the Guardian reported.

One in 10 UK adults are saving no money at all and 21% have less than £1,000 saved, the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) Financial Lives survey shows. This leaves many exposed to economic shocks and vulnerable to rising bills. Moreover, anxiety and stress levels were relatively high, particularly among those burdened by debt. Nearly 13 million people have low financial resilience, such as unmanageable debts, low savings and overdue bill payments, the BBC reported.

16 May 2025: Coinbase faces $400m hit from cyber attack; US watchdogs may plan to slash capital rules; hackers use fake jobs to infiltrate UK firms.

One of the world's biggest cryptocurrency firms, Coinbase, says a recent cyber-attack will cost it up to $400m (£301m). The criminals gained access to less than 1% of its customer data, which they then used to impersonate the firm and trick people into handing over their crypto. The group then demanded $20m from Coinbase to keep it quiet - but it refused to pay the bribe and instead promised to pay back every person who got scammed. The disclosure prompted the firm's share price to fall by 4.1%, the BBC reported.

US watchdogs are reportedly planning to slash capital rules for banks. These are designed to prevent another 2008-style crash. This comes as US president Donald Trump’s deregulation drive opens the door to the biggest rollback of post-crisis protections in more than a decade. The proposals are aimed at cutting the supplementary leverage ratio that requires big banks to hold high-quality capital against risky assets including loans and derivatives, the Guardian reported.

North Korean state-backed hackers are using AI generated resumes and stolen identities to infiltrate UK firms. Their roles come under the guise of remote IT working. A new threat report from CrowdStrike found that the hacker group Famous Chollima has pivoted focus from the US to the UK and Europe after a string of high-profile disruptions and indictments by US authorities. Crowdstrike logged over 300 incidents in 2024, with nearly 40% involving malicious insiders embedded in sectors from finance to healthcare, City A.M reported.

15 May 2025: ICAEW appoints new Regulatory Board Chair; Aviva's £3.7bn Direct Line takeover investigated; Burberry may cut 1,700 jobs to reduce costs.

ICAEW yesterday announced Parjinder Basra as the new chair of its regulatory board. He began the three-year term as the lay chair of the ICAEW Regulatory Board (IRB) on Monday and has twice before held the role of acting chair. Basra has extensive experience in public sector leadership within policing and healthcare.

Aviva's planned takeover of Direct Line is to be reviewed by the Competition Markets Authority. This could potentially set back the £3.7bn deal. The two insurance firms agreed a major deal in December last year, but the watchdog said it was investigating whether a merger would result in a "substantial lessening" of competition in the insurance sector. It will report its findings in July, the BBC reported.

Burberry is to cut around 1,700 jobs worldwide by 2027 as part of a plan to find £60m in cost savings. The move comes after it reported a 117% fall in annual pre-tax profits in the last financial year. It recorded a £66m loss, down from a profit of £383m, as the company has struggled against a broader malaise in the global luxury goods industry. Burberry employed about 9,300 people around the world last year, so the cuts could affect almost a fifth of its staff, the Guardian reported.

14 May 2025: pension funds aim to unlock £50bn in investment; customer data stolen in M&S cyber-attack; tax hikes to cost private school millions.

The bosses of 17 of the UK’s biggest pension funds have agreed to sign a new ‘Mansion House accord’ with the government. This will lead to at least 10% of their workplace pension schemes being invested in private market assets by 2030. Half of the figure (5%) will be earmarked for UK investments, including stakes in private British businesses, property and major infrastructure projects. The government claims this will release up to £50bn worth of investments. Signees include Aviva, Legal & General, M&G, Phoenix and the Universities Superannuation Scheme, the Guardian reported.

Marks & Spencer has revealed some personal customer data was stolen in the recent cyber-attack. This could include contact details, dates of birth, household information and online order histories. However, the supermarket chain said the data theft did not include usable payment or card details or any account passwords. It is still unknown when online orders will resume. The hackers, who also recently targeted Co-op and Harrods, used the DragonForce cybercrime service to carry out the attacks, the BBC reported.

A top UK private school warns recent tax hikes will cost it millions. Gresham’s School said it must now take action to ensure it “does not become unaffordable for too many parents”. Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed at the Autumn Budget that independent school fees are to be taxed 20%. Gresham’s said this, plus the removal of charitable relief on business rates will cause “financial challenges” and that the rise in employer National Insurance contributions will also contribute to it paying millions more in costs a year. Its latest results showed its coffers swelled to more than £50m during its latest financial year, City A.M reported.

13 May 2025: US and China pause tariffs for 90 days; Trump vows to cut prescription drug prices up to 80%; Monzo brings in bankers to advise on £6bn float.

Monzo is close to hiring investment bankers to spearhead a blockbuster public listing valued at more than £6bn. The digital challenger bank is reportedly working with the Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley on a series of meetings with would-be investors ahead of an IPO that could take place early next year. The timing, size and location of any IPO has yet to be decided and will depend heavily on market conditions in London and New York, City A.M reported.

US president Donald Trump has promised to use his executive powers to cut the price of prescription drugs in the US. The order will reduce prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices “almost immediately” by “30% to 80%”, aiming to bring them more in line with other countries. The announcement triggered a sharp fall in drugmakers’ share prices, the Guardian reported.

The US and China have agreed to lower their reciprocal tariffs by 115% for 90 days. They have also cancelled other retaliatory tariffs. US tariffs on Chinese imports will be cut to 30%, while Chinese tariffs on US imports will be cut to 10%. The pause will begin on 14 May. The US measures still include an extra 20% component aimed at putting pressure on Beijing to do more to curb the illegal trade in fentanyl, the BBC reported. 

12 May 2025: New Zealand Rugby post £8.7m loss; BoE head urges UK to rebuild trade with EU; ministers have depleted NHS funding.

New Zealand Rugby has posted a third consecutive loss. This is despite the firm – which encompasses the All Blacks – achieving record income. A NZ$19.5m (£8.7m) loss for 2024 follows losses of NZ$8.9m (£4m) and NZ$47m (£21m) in 2023 and 2022 respectively. The net deficit is partly due to foreign exchange hedging on sponsorship revenue and a NZ$38m investment in commercial revenue growth opportunities – including NZ$11.7m in their own content platform, NZR+, City A.M reported.

The Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey is urging the UK to "rebuild" its trade relationship with the European Union. He said reversing the post-Brexit hit to UK-EU trade would be "beneficial". Its US trade deal has left space for the UK to pursue a veterinary agreement with the EU, including alignment on standards in order to lower post-Brexit red tape on food, farm and fish exports. The government is currently in talks with the EU – the UK’s largest trading partner – on its plan to reset its trade and security relationship ahead of a summit later this month, the BBC reported.

Ministers have exhausted the amount of money they can give the NHS, the new NHS England CEO Sir Jim Mackey says. The former accountant said the NHS will no longer get big increases in its funding because of tight public finances. “We are pretty much maxed out on what’s affordable. It is really now about [the NHS] delivering better value for money, getting more change, delivering on getting back to reasonable productivity levels.” He defended cuts to the budgets of the NHS’s 215 trusts, warning that without them it was likely to overspend by £6.6bn this year, despite its budget being about £200bn, the Guardian reported.

9 May 2025: UK windfarm project shelved over rising costs; New York watchdog warns Trump cuts may increase scams; UK interest rates cut to 4.25%.

The world’s biggest wind power developer has cancelled plans for one of the UK’s largest offshore windfarms. Danish wind power company Ørsted said the Hornsea 4 project no longer made economic sense because of soaring costs in the industry’s global supply chain. It won a government contract last year. The cancellation is a significant blow to the UK government’s green energy targets, City A.M reported.

New York City’s financial watchdog is raising the alarm about the Trump administration’s cull of a key federal agency. Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a candidate for the city’s mayoral race, said the uprooting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will leave many Americans vulnerable to scams and predatory lending. The federal agency’s oversight and regulatory powers have been significantly cut and Lander is calling on state and local governments to make up for the gap in oversight, the Guardian reported.

Interest rates have been cut for the fourth time in the past year after the Bank of England reduced them to 4.25% from 4.5%. Bank governor Andrew Bailey said the slowdown in inflation was behind the cut. The Bank considered a bigger cut to 4% due to concerns the global trade war and tariffs could hit economic growth but concluded this would be offset by a drop in energy bills and eventually lower inflation. He added that future UK rate cuts are likely to be "gradual and careful”. Of the nine members, five voted to cut rates to 4.25%, two voted for 4% and two voted for no change, the BBC reported.