Big four tax bosses defend their firms during grilling from MPs January 31, 2013 TAX heads at the big four accountancy firms clashed with MPs yesterday over their role in helping large companies to reduce their tax bills. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, called for PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young to be banned from doing work for the government in light of the loopholes [...]
City Moves for 30 January 2013 | Who’s switching jobs January 29, 2013 Pinsent Masons Michael Isaacs has been appointed partner in the law firm’s financial sector disputes practice. He is a banking litigation specialist, and joins from Addleshaw Goddard. Issacs has over 20 years’ experience in the sector. Mizuho International The London-based securities and investment banking arm of Mizuho Financial Group has appointed Antony Slotboom as head [...]
Snow set to blast London as train services scrapped January 17, 2013 COMMUTERS were last night braced for travel chaos today as train operators cancelled services ahead of a snow blizzard set to batter the UK. Up to six inches are expected to fall across London throughout this morning. The Met Office last night placed much of the South East on an amber warning, the second most [...]
MWB lines up administrator November 14, 2012 MWB, the hotel operator, is said to have lined up accountants firm Deloitte as potential administrators as it struggles to deal with a financing crisis. The owner of the Malmaison hotel chain and Hotel du Vin is locked in battle with MWB Business Exchange, its 75 per cent owned subsidiary, over the repayments of millions [...]
City’s brightest named in legal hot 100 line-up January 28, 2013 SOME of the City’s top lawyers have been named on the industry’s annual Hot 100 list, including the silk helping Guardian Care Homes pursue Barclays for Libor-related mis-selling and the partner leading Co-op through its bid for Lloyds bank branches. The Lawyer magazine’s 2013 list, released yesterday, singles out 100 legal names to watch this [...]
Plans to force firms to switch auditors don’t go far enough February 21, 2013 BANKS, ratings agencies, now auditors: the firing line of financial sub-industries being dragged kicking and screaming into a post-crisis world continues to lengthen. As soon as tomorrow, the Competition Commission will pave the way for an overhaul of the Big Four accountants with a proposal to enforce mandatory rotation of their major audit clients at [...]
Cable launches inquiry into Comet failure December 18, 2012 VINCE Cable has ordered an investigation into the collapse of Comet after the electrical retailer’s remaining 49 stores brought down their shutters for the final time last night. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the Insolvency Service will carry out the probe under section 447 of Companies Act, which obliges companies to cooperate. [...]
Banking crisis reversing EU’s single market October 25, 2012 EUROPEAN banks are contracting foreign lending so far and so fast that it is reversing the single market in finance, according to a Deloitte report published yesterday. The warning came as new European Central Bank (ECB) data showed bank lending to the private sector slumped 0.8 per cent in the Eurozone in September, accelerating on [...]
Comet to start sale as buyers eye up stores November 5, 2012 COMET will this week kick off a fire sale of its remaining stock, though staff and shoppers remain in the dark about the future of the electrical goods retailer. Comet, which called in the administrators on Friday, intends to open its 236 stores as normal this week. The firm’s website has been closed to new [...]
Twosome transforming how we transfer money December 9, 2012 KRISTO Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus are the two Estonian founders of TransferWise, the peer-to-peer platform for transferring money. Parallels between TransferWise and Skype abound, not least because Hinrikus was Skype’s first employee. But the likenesses don’t stop there: they want to “make the world smaller, just as Skype has done”; they want to make transfers [...]