Rolls-Royce share price falls as sales drop for the first time in a decade February 13, 2015 The figures Shares at troubled engineering giant Rolls-Royce opened 3.3 per cent lower this morning after it reported a sales drop of six per cent to £13.7bn in 2014, the company's first drop in sales in a decade. Revenues fell six per cent to £14.6bn, while underlying pre-tax profits dropped eight per cent to £1.6bn (dead on [...]
Norway’s Statoil posts bumper profit due to US gas price hike April 29, 2014 NORWEGIAN energy giant Statoil posted net profit of 23.7bn krone (£2.35bn) in the first quarter, up from 6.4bn krone the previous year, beating market expectations thanks to a rise in US gas prices. Statoil is present in all the major US shale gas plays and benefited from higher demand due to an unusually cold winter. [...]
Which were the best and worst investments of 2014? December 22, 2014 This year low interest rates have seen investors who bet on traditional investments receive returns tantamount to chickenfeed. Perhaps we should have given up before we'd all even started? Perhaps not. Investors who plumped for chocolate, property, the US dollar and Aim-listed company Fitbug would have watched as their money practically grew on trees. Conversely, [...]
Rouble falls to a new low against dollar and pound as sanctions bite October 8, 2014 President Putin celebrated his birthday yesterday, but it's just as well he is a tee-totaller because Russia's currency is probably giving him enough of a headache to worry about. The rouble has fallen to a new low against both the dollar and the pound today, as sanctions and falling oil prices continued to hit [...]
Russian central bank hikes interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to stave off rouble slide October 31, 2014 So much for the softly-softly approach to monetary policy taken by most central banks at the moment. Russia has hiked interest rates by 1.5 percentage points to 9.5 per cent, in an effort to stave off further slides in the rouble. The value of Russia's international reserve stockpile has fallen more than $30bn since the [...]
Total CEO Christophe de Margerie killed in Moscow plane crash as his aircraft collides with snow-clearing machine October 21, 2014 The CEO of Europe's third largest oil company Christophe de Margerie has been killed after a collision between his private jet and a snow-clearing machine at Moscow's Vnukovo airport. Russian authorities said the incident had involved a Falcon-50 plane, with the collision occurring a little before midnight local time. Visibility was reported to have been [...]
BP sticks by Rosneft as Russia crisis hits profit April 29, 2014 OIL GIANT BP yesterday reiterated its commitment to Rosneft, despite the US putting sanctions on its head earlier this week. The FTSE 100 firm owns an almost 20 per cent stake in the Russian oil producer, whose chief executive Igor Sechin is one of president Vladimir Putin’s oldest allies. Russia has been at loggerheads with [...]
Trade deal must safeguard consumers, says Obama March 26, 2014 Barack Obama has been speaking this afternoon about the prospective trade deal between the US and EU, which would make it easier for the US to export gas to Europe. Having met with EU leaders in Brussels, the US president’s been addressing a news conference, trying to quell concerns he may support a transatlantic trade [...]
Russia optimists are making an increasingly implausible case October 6, 2014 A potential economic outcast is a bad place to invest money. Russia's economy has taken a battering this year. The conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions tit-for-tat with the West has delivered an enormous blow to confidence, with some of the country’s largest companies now all but locked out of dollar debt refinancing [...]
Eight charts that sum up 2014 December 22, 2014 This year will be remembered for the fragmentation of mainstream politics, Scotland's near exit from the 307-year old union and an economy which the Bank's chief economist Andy Haldane described as "writhing in both agony and ecstasy." What does all that look like? Here are eight charts that sum up the year. (Source: Getty) 1. [...]