Share Sounds from Share Radio Breakfast

Helen Thomas, Managing Director of BlondeMoney, joined Share Radio Breakfast to offer her regular market round-up. This week, Helen discussed the Fed after the decision to raise interest rates. This before a Trump presidency, so how will the Fed operate once The Donald is in power? And do we need to get used to higher interest rates from here onwards?

Ryan Heath, Senior EU Correspondent and Associate Editor at POLITICO Europe, joined Share Radio Breakfast to talk politics. The Daily Telegraph leads with news the UK could face a bill of £50 billion to leave the EU. Meanwhile the Financial Times says Brussels is preparing rule changes which would deprive London of one of its flagship financial businesses.

The latest retail sales data for November is in and, as widely expected, Black Friday and other retail sales days boosted the numbers. The figures are nearly 6% higher than the same period last year. But do the figures tell the whole story of what’s going on in retail, especially in light of Brexit, and with sterling in flux? Matt Cox found out more from Mintel’s Retail Analyst, Richard Perks.

A study of how small and medium sized businesses are feeling about the future suggests revenue and hiring will accelerate in the next 12 months. That’s been revealed in an SME Growth tracker by Capital Economics. Zamir Cajee, an Amazon Marketplace user and online retailer, was involved in the survey and he joined to discuss the findings.

There has been remarkable growth in property rental prices around the proposed new stations for HS2 and Crossrail 2. Otherwise, national rental growth has slowed. This has been revealed in Landbay's monthly Rental Index, which provides analysis of national rental growth. For more on this, the CEO and Co-Founder of Landbay, John Goodall, joined Share Radio Breakfast.

Scotland's Finance Secretary Derek Mackay has pledged a funding increase of £240m for local services as he set out his draft budget. Mr Mackay also confirmed he will not change income tax rates or bands. Those were two of the headlines from the Scottish Budget, and to bring us up to date with this, Share Radio’s Scotland Correspondent Maurice Smith joined Nigel Cassidy and Sara Sjölin.

High profile executives, including Microsoft's Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are investing one billion dollars in a fund for clean energy tech and addressing climate change. They're being joined by others such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Alibaba chairman Jack Ma. They hope to increase financing to emerging energy research, and help hit emissions goals set in the Paris Summit. Dr. Charles Donovan is Director of Imperial College London's Centre for Climate Finance, and he joined Share Radio Breakfast to discuss.

Internet giant Yahoo has revealed more than one billion user accounts may be affected by a hacking attack. This marks the biggest cyber hack to date, with the attack dating back to 2013. It’s separate from a data loss in 2014 when 500 million accounts were accessed. The news comes at a critical juncture for Yahoo, who is trying to sell its core businesses to the telecoms and media company Verizon. Matt Cox spoke to Peter Church, Counsel specialising in data privacy at law firm Linklaters, to find out the consequences.

Analysis by HSBC has revealed that global trade in services has outstripped growth in goods trade since the global financial crisis. The US, UK, China, Germany and France were the world's top exporters of services in 2015, but emerging economies will gradually gain market share as they continue to develop their workforce skills and digital infrastructure. Dan Howlett, HSBC Head of Corporate Banking UK, joined Share Radio to talk on the report.

In the lead-up to the Bank of England's decision, where it is expected to keep interest rates steady at 0.25%, a number of European central banks, including those of Norway and Switzerland, are due to deliver policy decisions. It follows the Federal Reserve, which yesterday lifted interest rates by 25 bps and flagged a faster pace of policy tightening in 2017 than previously forecast. Howard Archer, Chief European & UK Economist at IHS, joined us to discuss this Super Thursday expectations.