Osborne should reject the Vickers report in his Mansion House Speech June 13, 2012 GEORGE Osborne is a flip-flop chancellor – but on all the wrong policies. One area where a u-turn would be welcome is on the implementation of the Vickers report. However, In his Mansion House speech tonight, he will signal an intention to plough on as before – accepting both the good and the bad. Let’s [...]
Mass lay-offs push HSBC cost savings to $2bn May 8, 2012 HSBC beat expectations after cracking down on its cost base in the first quarter of this year, laying off thousands to bring its overall job cuts to 14,000 while keeping its revenues steady. Excluding the effect of an accounting loss on its debt, the bank’s underlying pre-tax profits rose from $5.5bn in early 2011 to [...]
HSBC cuts hit $2bn May 17, 2012 HSBC said it cut costs by $2bn after one year of a three-year turnaround plan, and is on target to meet its return on equity and other financial targets. The bank is close to already achieving the bottom end of a $2.5-$3.5bn range of annualised savings by next year, as set out by chief executive [...]
Wells Fargo profit rises April 13, 2012 Wells Fargo & Co reported higher first-quarter profits on Friday as the bank posted strong mortgage banking results and set aside less money for bad loans. Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth-biggest US bank, said net income was $4.25bn, or 75 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with $3.76bn, or 67 cents, a share in [...]
Bank of Ireland still struggling with Irish property hangover April 24, 2012 BANK of Ireland, the country’s only un-nationalised bank, has warned that “tough funding conditions” and persistently bad credit quality have hit its profits, but said there should be an improvement later this year. Despite taking nearly €5bn (£4.1bn) in three-year funding from the European Central Bank, BoI said that the cost of bank debt is [...]
WALL ST THE WEEK AHEAD July 1, 2012 US stocks finished the first half of the year with a bang as investors welcomed news that the Eurozone is a step closer to solving its 30-month-long debt crisis. Now for the question: Is this rally strong enough to last for more than a day? The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq posted their best daily [...]
City hits out at Tobin tax October 24, 2011 ELEVEN of the City’s main financial groups have urged chancellor George Osborne to fight any proposed financial transactions tax, in a letter sent to the Treasury yesterday. The City collective – which includes the British Bankers’ Association and Investment Management Association – argued that a tax would hammer the economy and affect all of the [...]
Europe’s shared currency shouldn’t entail Germany bankrolling a debt union May 22, 2012 GEORGE Osborne and François Hollande want Angela Merkel to support Eurobonds. These would pool debt issuance among Eurozone governments, allowing them all to fund their spending at the same borrowing rate. The more creditworthy Eurozone governments would thereby subsidise the spending of the less creditworthy. Merkel thinks that subsidising the spending of profligate governments is [...]
The UK’s consumer debt burden is stifling hope of economic recovery June 27, 2012 THE Eurozone crisis has grabbed all the headlines. Yet Britain’s economic problems are not exactly the same as those of the Eurozone. In Euroland, the crisis has centred on banking and sovereign debt. In Britain, we have already given our banks plenty of capital. Remember the part-nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds TSB? It was in [...]
RAPID RESPONSES March 11, 2012 Wilful ignorance [Re: Britain’s war on the aspirational classes, Tuesday] I agree with you about taxes. But I recall, in the run-up to the 2010 general election, listening to a radio show where callers claimed that the UK was a low-tax economy, thinking this was a bad thing. More recently we have seen support for [...]