It seems the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King has seen his pay increase quite substantially despite the economic downturn and the problems the UK banks have caused for the UK economy. King saw a 2.5% increase in his wages which now take him to three hundred and six thousand pounds a year.

It’s reported that Mervyn King has refused to accept anymore wage rises for the next two coming years and this was a personal decision not on too encourage other city bankers to take on. Saying that city pay is becoming more and more controversial day by day.

Sir Leahy the UK’s most influential retailers has bagged a whooping thirteen and half million pounds due the success of supermarket giant Tesco’s in the last year. Sir Leahy was not the only person to bag money either the success of Tesco saw members of staff an average of about £490 extra a year aswell.

It seems Sir Leahy will also have a great retirement with a pension fund of nearly fifteen million pounds. Tesco has nearly a third of the supermarket industry in the UK and is continuing to expand they are easily fighting off competitors like Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrison. Not to forget Tesco’s also has its fingers in a number of other pies adding to its success.

Struggling Kingfisher Group which houses brands like B&Q, Castorama, Brico Depot and Screwfix are hoping that the upcoming world cup competition will encourage consumers to spend. They are hoping that the world cup will take away the blues around the doom and gloom of rising taxes and bad weather. This is a genuine hope for the company as in the good weather this may encourage more home improvements and the world cup may encourage more gardening or other hobbies.

The group of companies has been feeling the difficult times recently due to the bad weather and the economic downturn. Hopefully they will be right and the world cup will help them in trade.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is cutting nearly 500 jobs in the UK. Jobs are being cut in its wealth management business with most jobs being lost at Queen banker Coutts and Co. These job cut will take place over the coming three years bringing RBS job cuts figure to over the twenty thousand mark. Royal Bank of Scotland had to be bailed out by the tax payer after major problems in the UK recession.

The bank claims that these cuts are necessary to fund the future of the business as it seems to be more of a cost cutting exercise than anything else.

The average UK House price is now 10 per cent below the peak reached in 2007. Nationwide building society has stated that prices have risen 0.5% in the last month or so. The average cost of a home is now around one hundred and seventy thousand pounds, this is the highest since July 2008. Despite the recession prices are continually rising and this is down to the lack of houses and demand being very high at the moment.

This also goes for rental properties there is a huge demand for rental properties but not enough properties to go round. This is difficult time for the UK.