HSBC will increase its mortgage lending by 20% in 2009. Mortgage data showed last week that UK banks had approved the fewest mortgages since 1999.
As the bank prepares to set aside £15bn (nearly twice as much as in 2007), the managing director says that it has ‘no intention of closing its doors to customers’ next year.
Paul Thurston says: ‘We remain open for business to the tune of £15bn.’
Banks in the UK have faced pressure to increase lending to small businesses amid the economic downturn following the Government's £37bn bail-out of the sector, which did not include HSBC.
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17 outstanding homes for sale across Britain, from under £250k to £6.5 million, as seen in Country LifeSomething for every budget in this week's round up of homes across the country that have come to market via Country Life.
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'We started thinking: if we were going to design a bike for Aston Martin, what would it look like? And then we simply couldn’t stop': Aston's new bike has everything you could ever dream of — except a price tagThe new Aston Martin .1R bicycle, a collaboration with manufacturer J.Laverack, leaves Paul Henderson stirred rather than shaken.
