US rally broken by cancelled euro summit October 25, 2011 US stocks fell yesterday on doubts European leaders can agree on a plan to end the Eurozone debt crisis, while major corporations disappointed investors with their outlooks. Though EU and Eurozone leaders still planned to hold a summit today, markets were spooked by news that a meeting by Eurozone finance ministers was cancelled. The news [...]
WH Smith in earnings rise but sales fall October 13, 2011 WH Smith yesterday reported a 4.5 per cent rise in annual profits, with cost cutting helping to offset a fall in sales. The newspapers, books and stationery retailer made a pre-tax profit of £93m in the year to 31 August, compared with £89m a year earlier. But like-for-like sales at stores open more than a [...]
When touching and reading combine October 19, 2011 THE e-reader has reached adulthood, and bloomed with the addition of a touchscreen. Do touchscreen e-readers look better? Yes: they look more sleek and almost sexy. Are touchscreens necessary? Perhaps not. The reader experience is not so different to what we had when we were thumbing tiny keys, but, with the exception of the iPad, [...]
FT app dropped from Apple store over fee and data row August 31, 2011 APPLE yesterday kicked the Financial Times from its App Store after the two failed to reach a compromise over subscription fees and user data. The Cupertino-based firm insists on taking a 30 per cent slice of ongoing subscription revenues as well as collating valuable customer information. There has been animosity between the FT’s publisher Pearson [...]
FT app dropped from Apple store over fee and data row August 31, 2011 APPLE yesterday kicked the Financial Times from its App Store after the two failed to reach a compromise over subscription fees and user data. The Cupertino-based firm insists on taking a 30 per cent slice of ongoing subscription revenues as well as collating valuable customer information. There has been animosity between the FT’s publisher Pearson [...]
S&P firms on track to beat expectations November 2, 2011 MORE THAN seven in ten companies in the S&P 500 have beaten forecasts with their results so far this earnings season, figures from Thomson Reuters show. Of the 370 or so firms to have revealed their third-quarter results, 19 per cent have missed forecasts and 11 per cent have matched expectations – but seventy-one per cent [...]
Push into online streaming in the UK will not be the potion to cure giant’s ills October 24, 2011 IT HAS been a year of two halves for Netflix. It reached a share high of almost $300 in July after a meteoric rise. Last year it accounted for more web traffic than any other site on the internet (that it deals in bandwidth-heavy streaming only makes this marginally less impressive). But it decision to hike [...]
Play.com sold in £25m deal September 21, 2011 PLAY.COM has been bought by Japanese online retail giant Rakuten in a deal worth £25m plus debt. The acquisition of the music and film specialist is part of a an international push to compete with US giants Amazon and eBay. Play.com, based in Jersey, had a meteoric rise, taking advantage of European VAT rules to [...]
TNK-BP inks $1bn Brazil deal October 31, 2011 BRAZILIAN oil start-up HRT said yesterday it signed a $1bn (£619.4m) agreement with BP’s Anglo-Russian oil joint venture TNK-BP for the sale of a stake in oil fields in the Amazon. HRT said it would receive the funds over two years for the sale of a 45 per cent stake in 21 exploratory blocks located [...]
US stocks sink as confidence drops November 21, 2011 US stocks fell for a fourth session yesterday, as the lack of progress in dealing with heavy debt both in the United States and Europe further sapped investor confidence in equities. Risky assets like commodities also fell, sparking a sell off in shares of industrials and energy companies. Volume was lower than average, with investors [...]