The City must stop talent trickling overseas May 20, 2010 CONFIRMATION that the UK is slipping down the list of the world’s most competitive countries comes as no surprise but is a situation that surely must be remedied before irreparable damage is done to our economy. The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook identified the UK as falling one place to 22nd in the world rankings. Bearing [...]
Thomson Reuters beats expectations November 5, 2009 FINANCIAL news and data publisher Thomson Reuters said yesterday its third-quarter sales fell but that its profits beat Wall Street estimates. The group said that revenue in its markets division, which serves the financial industry, fell four per cent to $1.86bn (£1.1bn) in the period. Revenue from ongoing businesses, excluding the impact of foreign exchange [...]
GOLDMAN, GOLD AND GOLDILOCKS May 3, 2010 CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT OVER the past week, a number of big stories have jostled each other off the front pages. The Greek debt crisis went critical and the odds of European contagion shortened after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greece, Spain and Portugal. On Friday it was reported that Goldman Sachs may face [...]
Return to normality will be bad news for the yen May 4, 2010 TODAY is the last day of Golden Week in Japan, one of the country’s most important public holidays. But the last few months have been anything but golden for the yen. The currency has fallen by more than 10 per cent against the US dollar and nearly 8 per cent against sterling. There are a [...]
FORTY YEARS ON AND WE SEEM TO HAVE LEARNED VERY FEW LESSONS May 24, 2010 WHEN you are older than God, as I am, I think you tend to become rather blasé as yet another political or financial crisis unfolds. I was 23 and working as an impecunious bank clerk at Hill Samuel (now part of Lloyds Banking Group, for the youth among you) when I was exposed to my [...]
FOREX FLASH April 6, 2010 COLOMBIA TO STEP UP DOLLAR PURCHASES The Colombian peso may have gained 26 per cent over the past year, but the rally could be stopped in its tracks if the central bank goes ahead and steps up US dollar purchases to help the Latin American country’s exporters. Bank of America analyst Alberto Boquin said yesterday [...]
Position yourself now for a yuan revaluation April 13, 2010 CHINA’S premier Hu Jintao might have upheld his steely resistance to any pressure from the US to revalue the yuan yesterday, but there is little doubt that it is a question of when Beijing will revalue, not if. Although Chinese officials have always been very clear that any move would be gradual, an appreciation of [...]
Indian rate hike sets the scene for the rest of Asia March 23, 2010 SO FAR this year, the markets have been concentrating on the prospect of monetary policy tightening in China and what that will mean for global recovery. But while the Asian powerhouse has been slowly tightening here and there in an effort to cool its economy down, it was India that bit the bullet and hiked [...]
JPMorgan reorganises teams November 3, 2009 JPMORGAN Chase’s recently named investment bank head Jes Staley is putting his stamp on the unit with a reorganisation that combines its various fixed income businesses under two co-heads, according to an internal memo. The move brings the bank, which last month reported a bumper $3.6bn (£2.2bn) third-quarter profit – largely driven by its fixed [...]
JPMorgan reorganises teams November 3, 2009 JPMORGAN Chase’s recently named investment bank head Jes Staley is putting his stamp on the unit with a reorganisation that combines its various fixed income businesses under two co-heads, according to an internal memo. The move brings the bank, which last month reported a bumper $3.6bn (£2.2bn) third-quarter profit – largely driven by its fixed [...]