Updated 2:04am 22 May 2013

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Nevill Boyd Maunsell

Nevill Boyd Maunsell: Logic turned on its head

It was another of those wonderful bad news is good news days. Ever since it started setting interest rates in 1997, the first rule at the Bank of England has been not to frighten the horses – never to let the markets think the Bank knows something dreadful that nobody else does.Read

Midlands backs Bank’s decision to pump extra £50bn into economy

The Bank of England’s surprise decision yesterday to pump another £50 billion of “printed” money into the economy, on top of £125 billion already deployed, was widely welcomed in the West Midlands yesterday.Read

Aviva marks return to profit with a dividend cut

Aviva marked a return to profit in the first half of this year with a dividend cut, reversing a policy which maintained its total dividend for the loss-making year of 2008.Read

L&G upbeat despite huge dip in half-year profits

Legal & General’s half-time profit was almost wiped out by £351 million of “negative investment variances” in a £20 billion bond portfolio, which supports annuities whereby it has to pay life-time incomes to pensioners.Read

Construction hope high despite sector still struggling

Hopes that house-builders might be starting to share in the pick-up elsewhere in the British economy went back on hold yesterday when an authoritative survey showed house-building activity shrinking at a faster pace last month.Read

Nevill Boyd Maunsell: A quiet August? Don't bet on it!

August used to be the month when nothing happened – except that the First World War broke out in August 1914 and the Second World War became inevitable in August 1939.Read

We will all pay – and that’s a VAT

Now we know what the American Fed’s Bernanke has got that the Bank of England’s Mervyn King hasn’t got. An exit strategy. Well, if has one, the governor isn’t telling.Read

Bigwood's July property auction to put 95 lots under hammer

Birmingham’s biggest property auction house is anticipating widespread interest in its July sale at Warwickshire County Cricket ground today with 95 lots to be sold on the day.Read

Birmingham office helps boost DTZ's revenue

While the worldwide recession drove the global property adviser DTZ £79.7 billion into the red during its year to April, its revenues from professional services rose by eight per cent.Read

Nevill Boyd Maunsell: Retired bankers or Spanish bankers needed?

There is nothing about it in Sir David Walker’s ingenious report, but have you noticed who is advertising most aggressively for your money just now? Every weekend brings a new barrage of ads from Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley.Read

Bank of England delays corporate easing increase

The Bank of England offered to buy £380 million of corporate bonds after failing to announce any increase in its £125 billion corporate easing programme yesterday.Read

Oil exports boost Britain's May trade figures

A surge in oil exports in May, when imports of all kinds fell by more than £1 billion, gave Britain the best monthly trade numbers for three years.Read

Most first-time buyers now rely on parents' help

Four out of five first-time homebuyers under the age of 30 are calling on the “Bank of Mum and Dad” to raise deposits that now average nearly £36,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.Read

Housing market stabilising as 'underlying pace of price decline is easing'

Halifax, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, took the occasion of a 0.5 per cent fall in its measure of house prices to highlight evidence that the housing market is stabilising.Read

Fall in manufacturing output wrecks post-recession hunch

Hopes that British industry could be leading the way out of the recession have suffered a severe setback with official numbers showing the manufacturing output fell by 0.5 per cent between April and May.Read

Most firms 'have no jobs for graduates'

More than two-thirds of employers will have no jobs to offer this summer as this year’s school leavers and new graduates try to find a place in the world of work.Read

Nevill Boyd-Maunsell: We're a long way off panic in the streets

People who reply to surveys seem, sometimes to know something that the rest of us don’t know.Read

Nevill Boyd Maunsell: Rising unemployment bad news for green shoots

Time was when the stock market attracted unflattering headlines by shooting up on news of rising unemployment.Read

Mortgage and loans grip eases - Bank of England

The credit crunch is losing some of its grip on mortgages and bank loans to businesses, but the squeeze on credit cards and other unsecured lending remains as tight as ever.Read

City View: Productivity for most, profitability for some

Every four years I deride the Americans for taking 18 months to elect a President. We do the job in a three-week campaign, don’t we? And there is no shilly-shallying afterwards. The removal van calls at No 10 next morning for the loser’s knick-knacks.Read

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Nevill is The Birmingham Post's economics editor and based in the newspaper's London office.