Burberry management reshuffle weighs on FTSE 100 February 7, 2013 The blue chip index was broadly flat in early deals, weighed down by luxury brand Burberry. This morning it announced a management shake-up, creating a new chief operating officer role and replacing its chief financial officer. Shares dropped 3.8 per cent in early deals. Investment manager Hargreaves Lansdown fell 2.25 per cent, after rallying more [...]
Gulliver admits HSBC was too large to police February 6, 2013 HSBC was forced into its biggest restructuring in almost 150 years because the bank’s complex structure made it attractive to criminals, its chief executive admitted yesterday. “Our structure was not fit for purpose for a modern world,” Stuart Gulliver told the parliamentary commission on banking standards. “Our geographic footprint became very attractive to transnational criminal [...]
Osborne does the wrong thing while Hourican takes the fall February 6, 2013 DEPUTY heads must roll. It’s impossible to decrypt yesterday’s Libor-rigging settlement between Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and regulators in the UK and US without being reminded of that immortal phrase. John Hourican, who will step down as the boss of RBS’s investment bank at the end of April, is entitled to feel hard done [...]
Hargreaves Lansdown lifts FTSE 100 February 6, 2013 The FTSE 100 pushed back over the 6,300 level this morning, as investment manager Hargreaves Lansdown topped the index, rising more than seven per cent. This morning the company reported robust growth, with revenue up almost a quarter in the six months to December and pre-tax profit up 30 per cent over the period. “Customer [...]
Crest Nicholson flotation gets a firm following February 5, 2013 FINANCIAL advisers for the housebuilder Crest Nicholson have managed to attract sufficient demand for the upcoming IPO a week ahead of schedule. The demand for the offer has been achieved despite the nervousness in the financial markets on Monday and despite the paucity of new issues in the London markets over the past couple of [...]
Barclays hikes misselling bill again to £3.5bn February 5, 2013 BARCLAYS has set aside another £1bn to compensate misselling victims as the bill for PPI and interest rate swaps scandals grows ever larger, the bank revealed yesterday. It has allocated another £600m to the PPI redress pot taking its total so far to £2.6bn. And it has almost doubled its interest rate swaps provision, setting [...]
ARM tops FTSE 100 February 5, 2013 The leading share index shrugged off its losses yesterday to jump 0.5 per cent in early deals, helped by strong corporate earnings updates. Chip maker ARM Holdings topped the FTSE 100 leader board in early deals, rising almost 4.5 per cent. This morning it posted a better-than-expected 16 per cent rise in fourth-quarter pre-tax profit. [...]
Italy probe on Euribor claims February 4, 2013 ITALIAN prosecutors in the town of Trani are investigating five foreign banks for possible manipulation of Euribor, the euro-priced counterpart of scandal-hit Libor bank-to-bank lending rates, court sources said yesterday. The five banks are said to be Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Societe Generale, according to the court sources. The probe [...]
The retail funding myth – why the investment banks aren’t to blame February 4, 2013 BANKS used retail deposits to gamble on the investment banking casino!” That is the common perception of the cause behind the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The popular belief is that retail deposits, instead of being used to fund “safe” traditional retail lending like mortgages, were used to fund high-risk derivatives trading on the international capital markets. [...]
FTSE 100 weighed by financial shares February 4, 2013 The benchmark index edged down this morning, as Chancellor George Osborne’s plans to electrify the ring fence between banks’ retail and investment banking operations was in the spotlight. UK banking shares fell as a result. HSBC dropped 0.13 per cent, RBS was down 0.6 per cent, Barclays shed 0.07 per cent and Lloyds Banking Group [...]