Lloyds in red as it takes £4bn hit on insurance protection May 5, 2011 Lloyds bank said it will take a £3.2bn provision to cover it for losses from the mis-selling of protection insurance and suffered another £1.1bn hit in Ireland. The part-nationalised bank said it made the provision against payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints after UK banks last month lost a court case on how policies were sold [...]
The man to take the place of St James’s founder May 5, 2011 CHARLES Gregson (pictured), the chairman of money broker ICAP, is to succeed St James’s Place founder Mike Wilson when he steps down later this year. City grandee Wilson will relinquish his post as chairman almost 20 years after he founded the fund manager alongside Lord Rothschild and Sir Mark Weinberg. He will become a “life [...]
Pru repays customers £4m for undervalued pensions April 13, 2011 INSURANCE giant Prudential said yesterday it would repay about £4m in total to 39,000 customers after it admitted making errors in valuing their pension funds. The Pru failed to return tax credits to unit-linked pensions funds held with Scottish Amicable, which transferred to Prudential in 2008, leaving some customers who partly sold or transferred their [...]
Goldman earnings prompt FTSE sell-off January 19, 2011 A surprisingly sharp sell-off on the FTSE this afternoon pushed the index below the 6,000 mark, to close down 79.73 points or 1.32 per cent, at 5,976.70. A bigger than expected fall in earnings at leading US investment bank Goldman Sachs sparked a rout among investors across all sectors. Earlier in the day, more bad [...]
Unions are right: United we stand, divided we fall May 18, 2011 TRADE unions might have adopted it as their rallying cry, but that doesn’t mean it is untrue. Indeed, it is applicable to much of life: united we stand, and divided we fall. It is the principle that underpins unions and countries and coalition governments, and failure to appreciate it drove swathes of the globe into [...]
HSBC to sell off $30bn of assets in strategic overhaul May 3, 2011 HSBC is set to announce some $30bn (£18.2bn) in asset sales as part of chief executive Stuart Gulliver’s strategic rebalancing of the bank. Insiders have confirmed the $30bn figure to City A.M., which was estimated by Barclays Capital analyst Rohith Chandra-Rajan in a note to investors. The sales will form part of implementing what Gulliver [...]
CPP rocked as Barclaycard suspends deal April 11, 2011 CREDIT card insurer CPP suffered a fresh blow yesterday after it revealed Barclaycard has decided to stop using its services, which are currently under scrutiny from the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Shares in the firm plummeted 14 per cent to 129p after Barclaycard put on hold the use of its “call to confirm” service, used [...]
Co-operative profit jumps after merger March 30, 2011 CO-OPERATIVE Financial Services saw pre-tax profit rise 5.5 per cent last year to £53.3m, with the bank attributing a steep drop in costs to synergies after its 2009 merger with Britannia. But earnings were dented by a sharp rise in claims due to weather-related chaos early last year, with the bank estimating a claims cost [...]
City veteran tries insurance April 18, 2011 INVESTMENT banker turned industry leader John Nelson is to fill the large shoes left by Lloyd’s chairman Lord Peter Levene from October. A City grandee whose finance career started at Kleinwort Benson and continued at Lazard, where he ran its corporate finance division for 13 years, Nelson is now best known for his leadership of [...]
City veteran tries insurance April 18, 2011 INVESTMENT banker turned industry leader John Nelson is to fill the large shoes left by Lloyd’s chairman Lord Peter Levene from October. A City grandee whose finance career started at Kleinwort Benson and continued at Lazard, where he ran its corporate finance division for 13 years, Nelson is now best known for his leadership of [...]