Month: October 2022

LONDON — UK Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt used his first Monday on the job to announce that almost all of the controversial tax measures announced by his predecessor would be reversed.

The major U-turn includes scrapping the cut for the lowest rate of income tax from 20% to 19%, as well as reductions to dividend tax rates, the reversal of off-payroll working reforms, VAT claim-backs for tourists and the freeze on alcohol duty rates.

Hunt said the reversed tax cuts totaled £32 billion ($36 billion) a year.

The only fiscal policies of previous Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng to remain are the cancellation of the planned rise in National Insurance, a general taxation, by 1.25%; and a cut in taxes paid on property purchases.

Markets cheered the announcement, with

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is planning his third major corporate reorganization since assuming control of the bank in late 2018, according to people with knowledge of the plan.

The bank’s four main divisions will be combined into three, with trading and investment banking forming Goldman’s largest and most important division from a revenue perspective, said the people, who declined to be identified before the plan is formally disclosed.

Goldman’s money-losing consumer finance operations will be split between two new divisions, with parts of the Marcus-branded unit folded into a combined wealth and asset management business and other parts going into a division that focuses on corporate clients, the people said.

That division, called Platform Solutions, will house Goldman’s nascent digital

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is reining in his ambition to make the 153-year-old investment bank a major player in US consumer banking.

After product delays, executive turnover, branding confusion, regulatory missteps and deepening financial losses, Solomon on Tuesday said the firm was pivoting away from its previous strategy of building a full-scale digital bank.

Now, rather than “seeking to acquire customers on a mass scale” for the business, Goldman will instead focus on the Marcus customers it already has, while aiming to market fintech products through the bank’s workplace and wealth management channels, Solomon said.

The moment is a humbling one for Solomon, who is devoted to the possibilities within the nascent consumer business after becoming CEO four years ago.

Goldman started Marcus in 2016, named after one of the bank’s cofounders, to help it diversify revenue away from the bank’s core