Belfast Telegraph

    City of Derry Airport is at risk of losing one of its last two scheduled airlines, if recommendations from the Bord Snip Nua report — suggesting cuts to government spending in the Republic — are implemented.     The report proposes ending the public service obligation (PSO) for regional air services, which currently […]

  A Question of Finance   Q. A friend told me that there is a stronger chance now that my endowment policy will not pay-off my mortgage. Is this true and what should I do about it?   A. Sadly, this is true. The catastrophic events in the financial markets have caused the shares in

To fix or not to fix, that is the question.         Until the last month or so, most mortgage brokers were united on the answer — opt for a fixed rate on your mortgage, taking advantage of historically low interest rates. Since then, the calculation has changed significantly. Banks’ own borrowing costs

I hope you enjoy your job: the chances are you will be doing it for many years longer than you once assumed.   Many of us — probably most — can forget about finishing work at the traditional retirement ages of 60 or 65. Working into our 70s is much more likely. There are several

  While several building societies have been hit by crisis, the City of Derry Building Society insists it is safe and “comfortably in excess of the statutory minimum” of capital reserves. The society is not merely the smallest in Northern Ireland, it is the second smallest in the whole of the UK.   In recent

  Get insured   It is summer holiday time – which means it is also time to make sure you have your travel insurance sorted.   What a bore, you might think. But let’s consider some things that could go wrong.   Your child eats a chicken burger at dinner. The food has not been

  Speculation is growing about the future of one of Londonderry’s largest employers. Homeloan Management Ltd – HML – employs 444 staff in the city, administering mortgages on behalf of banks and building societies. The company specialises in administering loans in the troubled sub-prime mortgage sector.   HML is owned by the Skipton Building Society,

It was unthinkable that a bank could go broke – once.  The queues outside Northern Rock branches put a stop to those assumptions.   Since then the UK Government has rescued the Royal Bank of Scotland – including Ulster Bank – the Lloyds Group – including Halifax and Bank of Scotland – and Bradford &

Derry City Council services have been threatened with industrial action by workers angry at restructuring proposals.  The council is to seek voluntary redundancies.   A confidential report presented to the council this week – written by the council’s chief executive and town clerk, Valerie Watts, and obtained by the Belfast Telegraph – details a radical

  Business and domestic ratepayers face a hike in district rates as a result of a dramatic fall in the value of Northern Ireland’s local government pension scheme because of the global financial crisis.   Northern Ireland’s local government pension fund lost £600m in value between January 2007 and the beginning of this year, a

  Paul Gosling joins the Belfast Telegraph to write a weekly column helping readers get their finances into shape. He already writes a weekly column on personal finance for the Belfast Telegraph’s sister paper, The Independent, where he is the paper’s ‘financial agony uncle’. Paul has also written for the Financial Times, The Times, the

  Weak leadership and a lack of civic pride have been blamed for the slow pace of economic development in Londonderry — by the man tasked with regenerating the city.   Sir Roy McNulty, chairman of Derry’s Ilex Urban Regeneration Company, wrote his blunt criticisms of other public bodies and the local population in a