Podcasts

Welcome to the This is Money and Share Radio podcast, brought to you in partnership with NS&I. This week we’re getting festive with our annual Christmas taste test. Four retailers will be competing on cost and quality as we sample a full range of festive fare. Will last year’s champion Lidl hold its top place? Or will it fall victim to a resurgent Tesco? Also on trial this week we’ll have the upmarket option, Waitrose, and a mystery wildcard. Georgie Frost is joined by taste testers Editor Simon Lambert, Consumer Affairs editor Lee Boyce and special guest Development Editor Rich Browning. It’s not all eating though and as we delve into the financial stories of the day we’ll be serving up a starter of inflation forecasts, digging into a main course of mortgages and for pudding we’ll be rounding things off with a look at how the supermarkets have fared this year. This is Money is presented by Georgie Frost in partnership with NS&I.

Joining Georgie Frost in the studio for the third annual taste test is Editor Simon Lambert, Consumer Affairs editor Lee Boyce and special guest development editor Rich Browning from the Financial Website of the Year. The team attempt to talk money matters - such as shared appreciation mortgages, a holiday Brexit tax and supermarket price wars - as they munch their way through a veritable feast of festive favourites. Who among Waitrose, Tesco, Lidl and our wildcard, will win out on taste and price, in our completely unscientific, pointless bit of seasonal fun?!

Georgie Frost is joined in the studio by Share Radio’s Senior Analyst Ed Bowsher. Today on the agenda, they discuss even more strikes, now by cleaners on Great Western Railway. Plus money wiring scams. All these stories and more on The News Review.

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.