ISSUE NO. 4 · THURSDAY 6 AUGUST 2026

A £19bn tax ask, Beazley's exit, and £160m frozen at Barclays

Britain's four biggest lenders have just posted record half-year profits, and the immediate consequence is a campaign to take £19bn off them. That figure is not a forecast, it is an ask, and it lands on a Chancellor who has held the job a month. The awkward part is the £13.7bn the same four handed shareholders in the same breath. Nobody distributes that much and then argues convincingly about what they can afford.

Everything now points at one date. The windfall tax, the 100% business rates exemption the sector is asking for in exchange, and Jamie Dimon's £3bn London tower all get settled on 28 October. Which would be manageable, except that Burnham still has no economists in post — three of the most respected in the country were briefed to Fleet Street as his advisers before the by-election, and a month into the premiership not one of them holds a role.

Below in full: why record profits handed the windfall tax argument to its opponents, why another FTSE 100 insurer is leaving London before the year is out, and what Barclays is doing with £160m that belongs to somebody else. After those, the numbers, tomorrow's diary, and one calculator worth five minutes.

Lead

Positive Money puts a windfall tax on the big four at £19bn. The same four have just handed their shareholders £13.7bn.

Two consecutive Budgets have already raised £66bn without touching the banks, and the next one lands on 28 October under Andy Burnham and John Healey. The sector's answer is the one that worked the last two Autumns: NatWest put £20bn of lending into the north, a cluster of investment pledges arrived inside 48 hours, and not one of them was about tax. Jamie Dimon's £3bn London tower sits behind all of it as the thing that quietly does not get built if the mood turns. If you own a bank share, the risk is not the levy — it is the deflection failing. Read the full story →

More News

Beazley booked £176.6m of pre-tax profit in the first six months of 2026, down 53%.

Zurich agreed to buy the insurer back in February at £8bn, and the deal completes before the end of the year, taking another FTSE 100 name off the London Stock Exchange. Insurance written premiums fell 4% to £2.27bn, and the US cyber book — 9% of the portfolio — is being scaled back as competition drives rates below what the risk actually warrants. The terms were settled on February's numbers, so everything that has gone wrong in the specialty market since lands on Zurich's side of the table rather than on the shareholders heading for the exit. Read the full story →

Barclays holds the money. The administrators want it back. And £160m sits between them.

Alix Partners filed a High Court claim at the end of July over cash the bank has been holding since January, when it froze the MFS accounts after spotting irregularities. Barclays wore £228m from the collapse, lifting credit impairment charges to £823m for the first three months of the year against £634m a year earlier. Grant Thornton already had £21m released for one funding vehicle back in April, which hands every other administrator in the structure a template. The sum is not the story — the precedent is. Read the full story →

The Numbers

Nothing has moved in the official data for a third day running, so the gilt is the only figure doing real work below: 5.08%, a full 1.33 points above Bank Rate, and what the Treasury pays on everything it borrows in October. The FTSE meanwhile closed on Wednesday within 22 points of its twelve-month high.

On the Diary

• Tomorrow, 7.00am BST — Lloyds House Price Index. The monthly house-price read, published under the Lloyds name since the Halifax index was rebranded in July. It is the cleanest gauge of whether prices are still drifting sideways while the gilt sits at 5.08% — and it is the gilt, not Bank Rate, that prices a fixed mortgage.

The Toolbox

One tool from the site each issue, chosen to fit what has just happened. Free, no sign-up, and it shows its workings.

Dividend income tax calculator

"The big four just handed shareholders £13.7bn. Here is what a dividend actually leaves you with."

The Close

Two of today's stories are about money that has already gone. Beazley's £8bn leaves for Zurich before the year is out, and the banks' £13.7bn went to shareholders before anybody proposed taxing it. The argument on 28 October will be about a smaller pot than the headlines suggest, and the Treasury still has nobody in post to do the sums.

If something here is wrong, or there is something you want dug into, just reply. It comes straight to me.

MJB