The Great Debate UK
“Tobin Tax” is a step backward for financial markets
–Tanuja Randery is the CEO of trading services firm MarketPrizm. The opinions expressed are her own.—
As the economic downturn continues to drag on, the cynics amongst us might be forgiven for thinking that the “Tobin Tax” is a move by politicians to curry public favour by taking punitive measures against the financial services sector.
On 14 February, 11 out of the 17 euro zone nations agreed to implement the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), a tax on bond, equity and derivatives transactions, in January 2014. Two countries have already rolled it out — France, last August, and Italy, which followed suit on 1 March this year. The UK, Netherlands and Sweden are all strongly opposed.
On the face of it, the FTT appears small — 0.1%. However, the tax is cumulative and cascading, affecting a chain of trading and clearing including vendors, brokers and clearing members. Each sale along the chain will be taxed. Also, the tax will be levied on any bank registered in a country that does apply the tax, even if the transaction takes place in a country that hasn’t implemented it. This means that if a UK bank does a trade with an Italian bank, they will be taxed twice, with both the UK’s domestic stamp duty as well as the FTT.
from Reuters Investigates:
Financial cyber-bullying?
"They love a conspiracy theory on the boards," David Jones, chief market strategist at spread betting firm IG Index told UK correspondents Rosalba O'Brien and Matt Scuffham when they were reporting for "The stock, the web, the CEO and his lawyers" . It's a look at some of the shenanigans around highly speculative resource stocks when they are discussed on message boards like ADVFN and iii. Late-night gossip and personal insults are par for the course: some suspect organised short-sellers may be behind the talk. Given the high volumes of online trading in the UK, we wonder how long it will be before regulator FSA is forced to take a closer look.
Day-trader John Douce is sceptical about the boards' impact on stock prices
Importers and exporters lack confidence in recovery
-David Sear is the global managing director at Travelex Global Business Payments. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Despite the UK officially emerging out of recession in the first quarter of 2010, the confidence of importers and exporters in a sustained recovery remains extremely volatile.
