Finance

The average house price in Edinburgh rose by 2.8% annually last month, according to figures from the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESPC). The average price of a property sold during February stood at £200,126, up from £194,678 during the same month last year. The rise marked the sixth time in the last seven months during which an annual increase had been recorded in the Capital.

Edinburgh City Council will freeze council tax rates at their current level for another year, in spite of what Cllr Phil Wheeler, Convener for Finance and Resources, belie

The City of Edinburgh Council, in partnership with the Office of Fair Trading, is running a month-long 'Scamnesty' as part of an ongoing drive to combat scams.

Edinburgh's housing market ended 2009 in better health than a year ago, according to the ESPC's report for the last quarter of 2009, with the average house price up from £193,354 to £218,043, an annual increase of 12.8%. The average house price in Edinburgh has now increased annually during each of the last five months of 2009, reflecting a trend seen across the UK.

The latest monthly statistics from the ESPC show that home owners in Edinburgh continue to benefit  from record low interest rates. House prices in Edinburgh rose by 15.4% annually to £221,875, according to the ESPC statistics for October.

Scotland's oldest publisher will be closing at Hogmanay, it was announced yesterday.

Edinburgh has slipped in a survey of the top global financial centres to 27th in the world.

The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) was first produced by the Z/Yen Group for the City of London in March 2007 and now reports every six months

The company delivering the tram project for Edinburgh, tie, has begun legal proceedings with the Bilfinger Siemens CAF (BSC) consortium who have been contracted to build Edinburgh's trams network.

James Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe and Asia, News Corporation, and Chairman of BSkyB, will give this year's MacTaggart Lecture at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

The Scottish Government has announced a £2 million injection into Edinburgh's Festivals over the coming financial year.

The Dunfermline Building Society, its 530 staff, 300,000 customers, branches, and call centres has been taken over by the UK's biggest building society the Nationwide today.

One of the effects of the massive evaporation of easy credit both in Britain and around the world in recent months has been deflation. In 2009, Britain is expected to officially enter into its first deflationary period in 49 years when the Retail Price Index, which measures the price of goods and services, drops below zero.

After the recent spate of grim news for local banks, Edinburgh's battered financial industry got a much-needed boost yesterday.

Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred "the Shred" Goodwin is facing increasing public and government pressure to give up his pension after running the bank into the ground.

RBS, which has its head office in St. Andrew Square, reported an annual loss of more than £24bn on Thursday - the largest corporate loss in British history.

Some of the building societies in this U.K. list have been taken over - for example, Britain's biggest building society, the Nationwide, has merged with the smaller Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Dunfermline building societies, but their individual brands (and web sites) are still active. However, The Staffordshire, which was

Some of these banks have merged - the obvious examples being NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland or HBOS (Halifax-Bank of Scotland) with LloydsTSB. Since the new LloydsTSB megabank has retained the brands of the original, individual banks, they are listed separately here.

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Edinburgh Business and Personal Finance Resources

The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the National Gallery, London (NGL) are celebrating  the £50 million acquisition of Titian's Diana and Actaeon from the Duke of Sutherland. 

The City of Edinburgh Council's Advice Shop will be moving to a new premises this summer. The council bought out of the lease to rent shop front premises on South Bridge in favour of a move to its own building at 329 High Street. The move was approved by councillors at yesterday's meeting of the Finance and Resources Committee.