At a glance: All the crucial points from Osborne’s emergency Budget June 22, 2010 THE ECONOMY/PUBLIC FINANCES • The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published fresh forecasts in light of the measures announced yesterday by chancellor George Osborne. • GDP growth will be 1.2 per cent in 2010, accelerating to 2.3 per cent in 2011, 2.8 per cent in 2012 and 2.9 per cent in 2013. The pace of [...]
EDF to up its stake in Edison February 23, 2010 ELECTRICITE de France SA (EDF) is considering using power assets and cash to buy a stake worth €1.6bn (£1.4bn) in Italy’s Edison. EDF currently holds 50 per cent of the power producer and plans to purchase a further 31 per cent from A2A SpA and its partners. According to analysts A2A SpA is set to [...]
Pay deal averts BAA strike pain August 16, 2010 FEARS of travel chaos over the busy Bank Holiday faded last night after airport operator BAA secured a last-ditch pay deal with unions, who agreed to call off planned strikes. In a dramatic climbdown, Unite said it would urge workers at Heathrow, Stansted, Southampton, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports to accept a “much improved” pay [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS March 4, 2010 London & Capital The boutique wealth management firm has appointed Sanjay Joshi as a senior portfolio manager in the fixed income team, responsible for overseeing portfolio construction, asset allocation and the company’s new UCITS income funds offering. Joshi rejoins London & Capital after spending four years at F&C Asset Management, co-managing a fixed income hedge [...]
Election2010 February 2, 2010 Blair lied over Iraq, says Short Clare Short yesterday accused Tony Blair of lying over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and said she believed the attorney general at the time had misled the cabinet over its legality. Short, a long-time Blair critic who was then international development secretary, disputed evidence the former Prime Minster [...]
Copenhagen meeting ends on flat note December 20, 2009 British businesses have slammed the Copenhagen climate summit as a “missed opportunity” as fears grow that London’s leading position in the carbon trading market is under threat. CBI director-general Richard Lambert said the climate-change meeting was “a disappointing conclusion” to two years of negotiations. “Business needs a clearer sense of direction if it is to [...]
OUT OF OFFICE January 26, 2010 ROPE AT THE ALMEIDA Based on a real murder case, and later turned into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, Patrick Hamilton’s darkly effective 1929 play is about undergraduates who murdered a colleague before inviting his friends and family round to tea. Roger Michelle (the film Notting Hill is among his previous successes) directs this [...]
Green rules pushing up energy prices February 25, 2010 ENERGY prices are too high in Britain, even after the recent cuts in gas prices. But those tempted to join in the populist rage at British Gas-owner Centrica’s results yesterday – UK profits hit a new record, though global earnings fell – need to understand all of the forces at play. It is true that sometimes [...]
Top businesses urge Gordon Brown to fight for emissions cut in Copenhagen December 2, 2009 SOME of Britain’s biggest businesses are today urging the Prime Minister to fight for a global cut in carbon emissions at next week’s climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change – which includes firms such as Shell, Tesco and Unilever – will tonight present a communiqué endorsed [...]
China growth fears hammer mining shares June 29, 2010 SIX of the FTSE 100’s top ten fallers yesterday were mining companies as traders took fright from a sharp downwards revision to a leading economic index for China. Natural resources stocks and cyclical plays plunged as the US Conference Board moved its April indicator for the Asian powerhouse from 1.7 per cent to just 0.3 [...]